


The Timeline Disease

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Politics, Post-SBurb AU, Romance, Science Fiction, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-18 19:46:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3581655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The game is over but John is still unstuck from the timeline and can’t seem to stay in one time period, on top of that every other thing seems to be going wrong, he keeps zapping from place to place only to find his friends deteriorating. The timeline is sick, and John either can watch it fall apart or change something before heartache, holy war or the "haters" set in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ===> PANCAKES: How to Get Punched in the Face

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this will be a multi-chapter fic about the post-sburb world and John's journey and troubles to his friends and his own life. It should update every Friday or more.  
> If you like what you see follow at http://insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com/ quality blog where I also do updates of my stories.

Chapter One: Pancakes

John was sleeping, he'd dreamed of horrorterrors, he'd dreamed of squids, he dreamed in purple and he woke up in an empty foreign house. Shit.

“Hello?” He called out weakly as he looks around the vacant mansion. No one answers. It is probably for the best, because he’s already guessed he’s not at home, and not supposed to be there.

He wonders around the large house, wizards decorate the walls, and tables as larger than life figures dramatic figures holding wands. Tacky, is all he can think. Rose wasn't kidding about it being unnerving to be in a huge house of wizards surrounding you. At least the harlequins were in a cozy home environment.

John wandered aimlessly further into the home, his footsteps echo across the hard tile floors, and he makes it to a living room which smelled like lilacs and paraldehyde. 

“Mom?” A small voice suddenly calls out from the second floor, filling the open empty space. John jumps and runs over to behind a particularly large statue of a bearded Merlin, or what be assumes to be Merlin.

A small Rose appears at the top of the stairs, tottering down them slowly and clumsily on her chubby little legs. Its totally adorable in her purple PJ's with a horse face on the front, John makes a mental note to tease Rose about it later.

“Rose?” An older, _familiar_ , woman's voice says from around the corner, John tries to ball himself up even further. “What are you doing out of bed?” A pink clad women asks as she walks up to her daughter. John stares, transfixed at the older alternate-universe version of his girlfriend. Yikes. She was still hot.

It strikes him that is definitely the time to go, he tries to pinpoint something his own Roxy would be thinking about, she’s stayed in his bed so something in the morning, he had to make sure she didn't think he got up and left. He racks his brain for morning related thoughts, one readily draws him in,

=====> Pancakes

John screws his eyes shut and thinks about the word pancake as if his life depended on it. The world around him disappears in a haze of light and color.

A second later he hears the sizzling of bacon, and the smell of flapjacks wafting through the air. Yes!

He opens his eyes excitedly, only to find one of the Daves staring back at him. An older one.

They exchange blank stares.

“Hey,” John says, “whats up?”

Dave lets out a largely put upon sigh, John frowns.

“How old are you?” Dave asks emptily.

“What?” John says, almost offended.

“What is your age at this present time?” He's speaks slowly and with a flat tone, and John juts out his jaw.

“Dude,” he expresses sourly, “I’m 19.”

“Yeah, I thought it was around that.” He pauses, mulling something over, “okay, sit down, you can have some breakfast, the pancakes are pretty sick this morning,”

“You're cooking?”

“yeah, dude, and I spit hot fire at it. Like if this was a mix tape it would get a fucking shrine built to it in the hall of the grammy’s.”

John chuckles, that sounded more like Dave.

“Wait.” He stares at Daves stubble and slight bulk built up on his trim form, “how old are you?”

He goes back to sighing, “I’m 23 John.” He grumbles about how they are seriously doing this again.

“23! Ah man, I'm so far off.” Now it was his turn to sound exasperated, if not a bit whiney, "I'm in a completely other time."

“yeah, as in time to eat my fucking playboy centerfold-worthy breakfast.” He distracts him by slipping a stack of golden brown slapjacks and bacon on his plate.

“Heh. And by the way you better get used to this, bro.” He gives John a bitter smile, John wants to leave again.

He takes the plate of food from him instead, and drizzles syrup on it.

“This is a constant thing?” It was a constant thing. But it had died down after he was 16 and the game was over. He was the only one with any godtier powers left, or special powers to say the least, it fucking bit, bit hard.

“Eat your damn pancakes,”

“Jeez, don't tell me, you've explained this all before, and it’s time line shenanigans.” You take a bite of buttery pancake. It is pretty, good.

“Good, amiright?”

“Actually good, yeah.”

“Actually?” Dave steps back in mock-outrage.

“Good enough,” John responds using the cool-kid underplay.

“Wow, somebody doesn't want seconds.” He gives you a grin, you don't feel like leaving as much.

John and Dave are finished with their food and discussing the epic June 15th prank on Jane when the sound of jingling keys comes from the front door.

“You live with someone?”

“Well yeah man, I’m 23, can’t afford a whole place like this on my own,” he sounds casual, but his posture is stiff and uncomfortable, John raises an eyebrow at him.

“The Perdue conference was a complete shit show! You're so fucking lucky you didn't have to go,” a voice announces from the entry way.

“Karkat?”

Karkat rounds the corner in a black cloak with a red trim, he carries a type of black bag resembling a briefcase. A briefcase.

“Good to see you John,” he returns blandly with an edge of reserve to it John wasn't used to from Karkat.

“Not our John.” Dave inputs shortly.

“20? 21?” They look at each other like this is a grim game of Guess Who that had been going on all night.

“19.” Karkat regards him bluntly.

“C'mon guys, I'm standing in the room, 19 and everything.”

“Yes.” He responds, “one of the first times around this part?”

“Yeah,” he replies, “why?”

Dave snorts, “just heads up, you're about to hang around this period a fucking lot.”

Karkat walks up to Dave, putting his bag on the low coffee table. Huh. They had a coffee table.

“We don't know why.” Karkat inputs like he’s a puzzle they're still figuring out.

“Well that’s… weird.” he chuckles uncomfortably, “I don't seeing this happening too much, I can just zap my way back,” he flicks his fingers, “zap.”

John expects them to at least call him a huge dork, but they just exchange an exclusive look between each other.

“Right.” Dave says, “if you see Jade can you just- oof” Karkat elbows him the gut.

“No fucking information! He hasn't even met anyone yet.”

John gives him a questioning look.

“Dave? I can tell Jade something, I just saw her last night.” Dave flinches at his words, but then eases up like an uncoiling snake,

“Spoilers, never mind bro.” Dave sulkily replies, going over to the couch and turning on the TV. A strange show resembling Who Wants to be a Millionaire comes on...only with aliens. Before John can get sucked into the strange figures and mysterious procedures of whack a mole Karkat drags him aside.

He tugs him to the entrance way, still with Dave in sight but out of earshot.

“Can you do me a favor?” Karkat asks anxiously.

“Yeah, sure- wait didn't you just tell Dave no messages?” He says accusingly, folding his arms in a ‘gotcha!’ sort of way.

“No you stain of genetic material on lifes backside, in this time period!” He says gesturing wildly in much more Karkat-esque like fashion, John bounces on the balls of his feet. He laughs,

“well that sounds like you,”

“Yes, it is me, congratulations, a formal request from your universe-creating religious leader, wow,” the sarcasm drips off his lips almost like a Strider.

“Religious leader…”

“Nevermind.” He hand waves him, “I just need help with ... our mutual friend.”

“Uh, okay?” John wonders why he wouldn't get to the point, “I am happy to help.” He beams.

“Ugh, you're still so cheerful,” he sticks his grey tongue out, you doesn't respond, waiting for him to give up the goods.

“Alight John, Dave is… is like when Gamzee on drugs, but some how managing to be even less fucking useful than that,”

“Dave is on drugs,” John repeats dryly. 

“No! It’s just he’s,” Karkat peaks around the corner, indicating a splayed Dave passively curled up on the couch, “like that.”

“Aw, you're worried, that’s sweet Karkat.” Worried about what John wasn't sure.

“It better be sweet, this has been such a pain in the ass!”

John isn’t all the way sure what that means. Before he can push harder for the hard facts, he hears a zap and sizzling noise from the fair left of the couch, in a dining room? This place was small, but definitely “homey.”

“Oh for fucks sake.” Dave says out loud as he stares at a figure.

“Is my other self here then?” A _very_ familiar voice sounds from the dining room.

“You better fucking believe it, John squared . Like you multiplying, can't wait, have a whole house full of John’s, John-apalooza, with bad pranks and worse movies.”

“Hey!” The John’s say in sync.

“Just kidding.” Dave puts his hands up defensively. Before anything else happens other John turns and points at him.

“You!” He growls.

“I think you mean “us”,” John replies cheekily.

Other John comes up to him in a fast walk, water leaking from his eyes, John tries to step out of the way. Other John balls up his fist anyway and then moves his arm back,

“woah there! Let’s wa-”

Other John clocks him right in the face, pain spreads from his nose to his entire face, he falls backwards on his ass as blood starts pouring from his nostrils.

"Ah!"

“Why are we like this??” Other John roars, disappearing immediately afterwards with a *pop.*

John holds his bleeding nose desperately trying to quell the rush of red filling his mouth and wetting the front of his shirt. Tears leak out the side of his eyes.

“John!” Karkat cry’s out, kneeling besides him, hands hovering over his head, unsure if he should touch him or not.

“Holy shit,” Dave says in understatement from across the room.

John wants to go home, and he wants to go home _now_. He grasps for the past from within himself, trying to hold onto a any thin thread of thought that would draw him backwards, he tries some words: home, birthday, Roxy, he simply grabs onto BACK.

BACK. BACK. BACK. God he hopes one of his past friends is remembering this word at a good time.

**  
==== >Back**


	2. ===> BACK: How to Impress an Empress

John is clutching his nose, and practically hyperventilating through his mouth, when he reappears in a new, elegant, room.

“Oh my,” a reserved yet recognizable voice says, John looks up through slanted eyes, the blurry outline of Kanaya appears in a green backless gown.

“John, where did you come from? What is wrong with your nose? Wait a minute, never mind, one second.” He'd never heard Kanaya babble before, if it could be considered that. He hears the din of rushing water from her bathroom a moment later.

The ache of his nose starts to subside, he tries to wipe away some of the blood with his sleeve so Kanaya isn't quite as worried about him.

Mission failed. She gasps again when she takes another look, and goes back into her bathroom for another washcloth.

“It’s okay Kanaya. I’m fine…-ish” Blood comes out of his mouth as he says it. She gives him a stern look.

“You are going to have tell me how this happened.”

“Well, through a lot of...stuff.”

“Yes." she squints at him, "as I understand it, that’s how things usually happen.”

“Gee Kanaya, I thought you didn't understand human sarcasm. Rose _rubbing_ off on ya?”

Kanaya goes slightly teal in the cheeks, “yes well, we have been rubbing off on each other.”

“Ew, alright,”

She firmly wipes the blood from his face, using the washcloth to drag the drying blood from his nose, removing the crusted red however just caused more fresh blood to rush out.

“Maybe a kleenex? I mean, tissue-paper-thing to stuff my nose with?” He tries to use xeno-friendly language.

She nods shortly.

“So what was this “stuff” then?”

“I went to another time period, got punched in the face by myself, just normal things… by the way, how old are you...in humans years?” He lets her be the one to do the math.

“Well that does sound like some stuff,” she answers quizzically, he makes a face while shrugging to reassure her she wasn't the only one confused.

“And I am,” she pauses to count, John reflects on how cool Kanaya actually is for just going along with this trouble, “well 9 sweeps, so around 18? 19?” She finishes, John nodded resolutely. He’s close to his year.

“Why tonight though John?” She says with a hint of distress in her voice as she stares at her bloodied hands in disgust, or maybe hunger, it was hard to tell.

“What were you thinking about?” He inquires.

“Well,” she traipses over to her wardrobe, “I was deciding between this green gown one, without a back,” she indicates to the one she was wearing then, “and this yellow one, with a lace back” she takes out a lemon yellow 50’s-house-wife style outfit. He cringes.

“It is based off of Roses God Tier,” she says with extreme fondness.

“I’d still definitely go with the green one,” he encourages like a real fashion consultant to his girl in need.

“I did conclude the same thing afterall.” She sighs examining the stunning fitted outfit, "it is more mature for tonights events."

“Oh my God!” John exclaims, “the alien-meetup thing! You’re doing that!” Oh my God.

“Very much so,” she says eyeing him.

“I was in another time period, and now, that was, I was just getting ready for this 3 weeks ago!” He begins to panic, “I missed three weeks!”

“I have...an outfit for that?” She tries to offer, consoling him.

“How long do we have?”

“Two hours.”

“That’s not long, did I have a speech, who is coming.”

“Not long at all, no, all three of the main species of Origin, plus trolls, humans, and… The new Empress.”

“Right, empresses, got it, got to impress an empress.”

“Hush, put this on,” she hands him a suit, suspiciously in his size, “besides,” she stares at herself in the mirror, “I'll be doing most of the impressing.”

John stares at his friends girlfriend and silently agrees.

John---> Impress an Empress

 

John, with much difficulty, puts his suit on, while divulging the full story of his misadventure. Kanaya listens thoughtfully, he catches a very calculating look in her eye, it must seem as strange to her as it does to him.

“How much did I miss here?” He finally asks nervously.

“Not much. We have gotten several messages from the visiting dignitaries all asking for different accommodations, and the staff, we have staff, have since struggled to meet their needs. Perdue need higher chairs with gold inlet, Messmeians need separate rooms for males and females, so on, so on,” she finishes as she notices he’s rather uninterested, “that’s what we've been doing” she asserts flatly, “rather dry compared to yours, it should pay off tonight.”

“I’d definitely prefer this I think.”

“We'll see,” she responds slowly.

“Oh, yes wait, Roxy is coming? And everyone?” She gives him a reassuring pat on the back.

“You know they are coming. We could see them now if we want.”

“Yes! That would be great.” He'd just last seen Roxy three weeks ago, after she stayed the night at his house, not great timing.

“Do you remember the layout?”

“Not at all.”

“Alright then, follow me.” They exit the room, strolling through the cross of human and troll aesthetic. It was supposed to a symbol for human-troll unity, a burgeoning new era of friendship starting at the planet “Origin” in the metropolis city of Jyestha, named by Indian scientist dude, and called every other thing by everyone else.

Jyestha, Center World, Travel Pact, it was the cosmopolitan center of the cosmos by default due to its central location. The planet was technically troll-owned, but a huge swath of land, and the whole city, was known as a “diplomatic zone" where nobody had full authority. The place was a huge frickin mess, but also home for most of them.

"Is that a muscle beast in Italian-Renaissance style?" John asks as they stroll through the huge establishment. **  
**

"Don't look too long at," Kanaya says in good humour.

"This is not what I imagined when I thought of final "reward"."

"Enodia gave us everything we asked for, excepting a good taste in decor." He chuckles briefly and she grins at him in return.

The final denizen Enodia had given them a choice of the universe they wanted, either one started from scratch where they would repopulate the universe themselves, or enter a whole new universe in the middle of its history. They haggled with her, got the universe to include humans and trolls with cultures intact, something familiar to go off of.

The only catch was aliens would have developed themselves in this universe, just as the humans did in the trolls game, that meant they had other species in the universe to keep the peace with, and a chance the game would restart itself in one of the other species. They took the deal anyway.

They entered the universe when space travel was invented so they could visit each other and their planets. They didn’t start at their planets though, they all started at the cosmopolitan planet “Origin” (GET IT? it was as subtle as “Beforus.”) and there most of them had stayed.

John passes the Great Hall towards their final destination, he glances at a giant a picture of a bloodstained Empress shaking the hand of earth's 78th president, it was there to appeal to the trolls, but did little for John, and most humans he assumed. Cross-cultural sensitivity was a work in progress.

They entered a side room where the hosts were going to wait for their guests, and take breaks in throughout the night.

“John!”

“Roxy!”

They see each other and immediately hug- it had been a long time. She then grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close to her incredibly pissed off face.

“Do you know how many gin and tonics I drank over you the last three weeks?” The anger in her eyes was seering. “Not nearly enough!” She lets him go and laughs hysterically at herself, she downs a drink and precedes to wobble tipsily in place. Of course she was wasted.

“You’re drinking again.” He says dourly,

“It’s about to be a party Johnny boy,” she winks at him, “so _jus_ ’ for tonight. I have shelf control you know.”

John is thinking of jokes to go with 'shelves' superior control, when her face contorts again,

"Plus," she grouses, "you haven't even been here!" 

He hadn't been there, and now she was drinking again, not as much as she could be, but John was not pleased, neither is Dirk who comes over and takes the drink from her personally. He precedes to scowl at John through tinted shades.

“Where have been?” That questions again. John scratches the back of his neck under Dirks unrelenting gaze,

“I time hopped. Still not completely fixed to this time period I guess, heh,” he gives a weak laugh.

“OMG, you totes just zapped to another time??” Roxy looks fascinated, God he liked her. Especially in a purple cocktail dress and long silver earrings framing her face.

“Yeah, went to future,” he touches his swollen nose, “got punched in the face.”

Roxy laughs, “that sux!” She precedes to pout, “I would kiss it and make it better,” he flinches at the idea of it being touched, “but I wes really worried about you.”

“I am really sorry, I didn’t know this would be happening again.”

Dirk nods solemnly, “it shouldn't be.”

Helpful, John thinks to himself privately.

“We should come up with a system,” Roxy offers practically, “like words to think of, I mean like it’s word right? So like when we need to call you home...instea’ of waiting three, frincke-n three, weeks.”

“Sorry. Again.” He fidgets and wants to hug her again.

“I’s fine, i’s fine. Do you want a drink?” He follows her to the drink table, mostly to get away from the piercing stare of Dirk, Dirk who, like the rest of them, looked sharp in a black suit and orange tie, which would be a complete look if not for the smuppet etched in the end of the tie. (Why??)

“Hey man,” Dave, his timeline Dave, approaches him as well in a red suit.

“Went to the future, nothing to worry about. Punched the face, by myself.” John explains in a hurry, he’s sick of going over it. Dave just arches one slender eyebrow but otherwise gives no reaction.

“Cool.” His lips tip up slightly.

“Cool.” John smiles back openly.

“That _is_ an interesting story.” Rose is right behind Dave, a hint of intrigue ghosting her eyes, sharp and purple John has a flashback of the empty house and small girl, “by yourself you say?”

“Yeah, just appeared, don’t know why.”

“I do.” A cheery voice says from across the drinks table, Jade appears in a sparkly dress decorated by space and star alignments, eccentric but fetching, “sometimes you just want to give yourself the old one, two,” she demonstrates by punching the air, “you can ask Karkat about it I'm sure!”

It was good to see Jade, he thinks he might actually want to tell her of all people the story.

Before he can share it with any of them a man in a penguin-like suit appears at the door, he immediately wants to prank him so bad, maybe with tying his shoes together.

“Guests are arriving.” He says in an even tone, no fun. Everyone exchanges a look anyway, It was go time.

John is about to go follow Roxy around and make sure she neither hits on random objects, or people, when Jade intercepts him.

“Come on.” She smiles broadly again at him, "let's go this way."

“Roxy.” He gestures at her.

“Dirks got this,” and it’s true Dirk follows Roxy around like a knight of rogues of void, he was always giving John threatening looks, and John is suddenly more willing to go with Jade.

He watches as they stalk off with Roxy telling Dirk she was going to set him up with a space boyfriend "like ri' now."

“We’re going to go help Kanaya.” John blinks, he’d almost forgot about her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah!” They walk into the dining hall, she heads him over to end of the table where several name tags are set up, Kanaya, Jade, himself and Jane all set up right round the name tag "Empress." He gulps.

They set up the most personable players to be around her at least...and Rose, directly next to Kanaya as well, four of five wasn't bad.

“Are we…?”  
“We’re going to wait for the empress.” She whispers as guests start trickling in, they don't go up to them to John’s relief, cultural sensitivity was difficult.

Jade and John sit down, exchanging gossip, which was a lot more fun now that there was more than two people, two sprites and a horde of consorts on a boat.

They are in the middle of discussing the increasing PDA Jane and Jake were showing (yuck), when the noise in the room died down. Only whispers of forewarning snaked through the air like foreboding mist, until not even that.

A young, purple, Empress enters, she is maybe just 7 sweeps, young and innocent looking, so much different than her condescension. Hope rises in John’s chest, this really was the 'reward' universe.

“She’s coming over!” Jade squeaks shaking his shoulder in excitement.

“Yeah.” He confirms, mesmerized by her tasteful amount of gold on her and friendly demeanor.

“How do we greet her again?” He finally asks, panicking slightly now that the moment was here- and how he'd missed most the training.

“Oh John.”

“You can start by saying hello.” The Empress walks up to them, a calm smile on her face.

“You remind me so much of our friend Feferi!” Jade bursts out. John freezes up at Jades brazen exclamation. Small talk was _not_ talking about dead alternative universe friends.

The young empress just laughs, “I am glad to hear of more humans being friends with trolls then.”

It was very tactful, reassuring.

“Yeah, we have loads of troll friends at this point.” John inputs.

“As it should be young human.”

“John. John Egbert.”

“Tuliss Peixes. Happy to meet you.”

She actually puts her hand to shake his hand- like humans. He only continued to like this version of the universe, he takes her hand and shakes it briefly.

"I really like your name," Jade says with more grace this time, "we have a human flower that sounds like that."

"Oh?" Before they can explain the concept to her, a familiar couple walks up to them.

“I see you two have met,” a very elegant looking Kanaya strolls over, a light-blue clad Rose following behind her, “would you care for a seat your highness?”

“Oh please, it’s Tuliss, and yes, I will.” She goes over and sits down delicately, her servants place themselves around her as a solid block of grey flesh.

They all settle in as their very unusual dinner was soon to start. And by unusual John meant there were five different species here, all with different tastes, and- how did Kanaya plan this again?

Nevertheless, John turned his attention to the Empress above all else. He could make up for being missing somehow.

“So, Miss Kanaya, do you know much about the different species here?” She asks politely, “I personally I wish I could say I knew more.” 

“Uh, why yes, I know quite a bit, though actually my matesprit is more studied on the matter.” Kanaya looks caught off guard, not what she was expecting, and turns to Rose to fill in the gap, Rose blinks slowly at them.

“Yes, I have been rather interested in the different aliens that have been settling Origin.” Her face as calm as an ocean, John is impressed by her level headedness, “they are all very impressive.”

Tuliss eyes lit up apparently delighted at the thought of other sentient beings.

“Yes! I’m glad you agree!” Tuliss seems pleased, and coming from Rose of all people.

“I’ve been looking into the biology of some of them as well!” Jade interjects, “that is if you have any questions.”

John is put out once more by Jades brashness, but the Empress isn’t.

“I do actually.” She takes out a notepad and paper. Oh my gosh, he thinks to himself, this was going to be an easier night than he thought.

The dinner went on smoothly, each presented with their preferred type of meal- though most of them grumbled about it being only two courses, and John resists telling them to stuff it. Five different kinds of alien food was expensive, and they are not springing for a five course meal for each of their crazy tastes.

“And the Messmeians? They were war like trolls as well?”

“In a sense” Rose, who is the most versed on alien history’s, “the hostile environment forced them to fight nature, the fauna, and each other, everything actually.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, but now they are much more...demure,” Rose eyes a female Messmeian two seats down, wondering if she could hear them.

Messmeians were a tall willowy species with wide hips. They were covered by a fine layer of white fur and thick hair on their head, arms, and general body. That is, the females did, Messmeians were strictly divided by gender, the females and males looked radically different and practically independently governed themselves, except when it was time to mate, which they had to apply for with the government.

All he really knew outside of that is they come from a really cold planet, so he was pretty curious too.

“They only had a limited amount of habitable places on the planet,”

“So we needed to create population control.” The Messmeian two seats down finally spoke up in a thick silty accent, Rose sits up straighter in her chair. “Pardon me your empress, I was” she searches for the word, “listening in, and thought I could...Contribute.” She finds her way through the sentence in a rough halting manner.

“Yes, oh no, go ahead.” The alien queen looks even more excited, biting her lip and bouncing in her seat.

“We simply controlled the more violent population, bred for intelligence, stability, and...beauty,” she smiles etherly at them. John wouldn't consider them too “cute” with the large black glossy eyes and way too much body hair, but the certainly had an eerie glamour. 

“What do your males look like?” John blurts out as the designated male there. Had to represent. The Messmeians face goes slack, Rose kicks him from under the table.

Figures he would be the one to mess it up.

“They are duller in color correct? Brown? And shorter, with more claws and strength.”

“Strength is debatable,” she inputs, “though I shouldn't speak of them.”

She looks away in annoyance.

Jade whispers in his ear that the Messmeians had a type of rivalry between genders going on. Huh.

John fades in and out of the pleasant conversation throughout the night after that.

They talked with the Perdues, about echolocation and if they could see in the day, they could. Perdue were smaller aliens with four long legs and arms they get around on, one small body covered in brown fur, a large mouth, two circular ears perched on their head next to two very small eyes. They all wore the same white robe with differing shoulder pads, and usually annoyed John with their air of superiority. In short, they were round furballs with too many limbs (an opinion which had nothing to do with his annoying Perdue neighbor who kept letting her kids out at 5 in the morning to "get some air" in the middle of the hall way.)

Finally, they briefly touched on the Esi, the final species at the dinner. They were friendliest of all the species, polite and with very good communication skills- good voices. Only. They were blobs. Gaseous blobs that tumbled around like hamsters in balls, accept no hamsters. They came from a low gravity planet covered in different light weight elements, as such on their homeworld they floated around as gaseous sentient life forms, fairy's almost, and off planet, well, they rolled around like smelly blobs. Fun.

The Empress was full of questions, earnestness, and keen ear for social graces, it was a relief, even a good time.

“If I may ask your highness,” Rose speaks up, her tone probing, John has a bad feeling about this, “why such the interest in foreign species? I heard trolls preferred...different means of interaction.”

His fear was confirmed. Rose had just asked why she didn't want to subjugate and eat these people, he gives Rose a tight look, Jade goes as far as to grimace in her direction.

“We're not interested in conquest.” She replies directly, “we want trade, good relations, following the teachings of the Infinite One.”

Oh God, the Infinite One. John rolls his eyes, it was cult-ish society that worshipped a large space worm, weird but innocent enough belief system.

“Our new intergalactic relations will reflect the future troll system.”

John, and everyone pauses, they hadn’t touched on politics yet tonight, how the young empress planned to rule now that she'd "inherited" the throne, now was a good time as ever to find out the trolls future he supposed. They collectively seem to hold their breath.

“We will be equal.”

John smiles, this was what a reward looked like. Kanaya scoffs next to him, a controlled look on her face.

“By what way do you mean equal?”

“Dear Kanaya, you should recognize from my letters!” Rose gives Kanaya a sidelong, curious, look. The Empresses volume increases exponentially, “it is time to reform the patronage system, time to create a safer environment for all classes, and break down blood castes,” the entire half the table is listening with peaked interest, “it is time to take apart the inner divisions, and create a meritocracy! Where it is merit before birthright.”

A blue blood at the other edge of the table faints dramatically.

“Ladies, gentlemen, humans, distinguished Mesmi’s, Perdue, Esi, Trolls, it is time to announce a new century, era here and now, of dignity, security and equality! Including all species, castes, and planets.”

John can see the campaign buttons now. Everyone at the table starts clapping euphorically, John thinks he can hear Karkat clapping the loudest.

John is impressed. Very impressed, he was going to be impressed any way just be the low standard of her not hucking a trident at him on sight, but this, this was something else.

He claps harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is the second chapter! Fic looks like it will be 22 chapters, haven't decided if it will be more PG or have a little "adult content" mixed in yet.


	3. ===> ROBOTS: How to Fall

John and Dirk stand on the second story of a club, lights blister through the room in rapid succession, foreign music blaring in uneven, alien, beats, people dance below them like their lives depend on it and the world is going to end. John and Dirk glower at each through a very heated conversation,

“What’s your problem Strider??” John cries out accusingly over the music, “Roxy knows what she wants, and it's not to be tailed by an obedient dog.”

He shrugs like an asshole, John balls up his fists.

“I know, I just suggested I backup Roxy on your way home, or else she comes back with me. We live one door apart.”

“We can't discuss this without her here.” John says crossing his arms like a child.

“It’s a simple fucking matter Egbert, not Sophies Choice. Spoiler, she picks the boy, people die.”

“What?” Dirk just shakes off his ignorance of pop culture,

“Look, it’s a better idea, you're right Roxy knows best, but I'll just be with her in case you blast out of this time period like a fiery jet pack,”

John replies through clenched teeth, “you’re just never going to trust me?”

Dirk huffs, “why do you always have to make it about that? Can't you just,” he leans in pretending to be sauve, “shut the fuck up about your tiny _ego,_ bro? Lemme watch her.”

The insinuation about John was there, and John still couldn't figure out why the other boy was still so hostile towards him, it had been three years.

“DO yOU WANT TO fight?!” John’s voice goes up and down with the noise level of the club around them. Roxy had wanted to go out with everyone, especially Jane who was getting pretty serious with Jake and they hadn’t seen as much of lately. The word “pregnancy” was thrown around.

__

“Its been three years Egbert." Dirk breathes out, "I thought you would never ask.” John were so ready to knock the stupid smirk off his lips, God how could he like Dave and Davesprite so much, but hate this posturing jackass?

To say the least it was _on_ ,

“OUTSIDE.” He'd need to hear to do this, Dirk nods curtly in affirmation.

They wander outside, bumping into each other occasionally, not completely sober themselves. John fumbles with his sylladex until he retrieves his hammer, which he hadn’t used in a while, he was feeling pretty confident though, both from the gin and the idea Dirk was a huge neeeerd who could be, needed to be, put down. He laughs to himself.

The biting cold barely stings as they make their way outside the club, it was a 'moving' club put up by Synlindarian's, bright yellow humanoids who liked to party. Of course, their aesthetic included being in the middle of fucking no where, a dark short forest to their left, and an icy cliff to the right, it was a dangerous walk home to say the least. Not a party atmosphere either, but it sure as hell was a fighting one.

John sets his feet apart and gets ready for a stand off, Dirk does the same, a pair of robot hands over his fingers and shitty anime sword in hand.

__

“What are you two doing??” A voice calls out from an outside cat walk up above them.

“Roxy!” John calls out.

“Are you two being dumb? Can you do it inside?” Jane calls out, shivering next to a sloppily dressed Roxy who also looks cold.

“Gotta fight your platonic boyfriend,” John says scathingly, “did you know he’s an ass?”

“Dirk, don’t be an ass to John.” Dirk looks up at Roxy silently.

“He challenged me, can’t let a bucktoothed corn-job insult my honor Rox. You’re non-platonic boyfriend is all wound up, could use a sword up his backside,” Dirk smirks at him.

“Oh my God!” John charges him, hammer up.

Dirk gets the first hit in, he’s much faster than John, but John is sturdier and plants his feet down when Dirk tries to knock him over.

He blocks a downward sword strike, then lunges to hit Dirk in the soft underbelly, Dirk cuts him to the chase and kicks him in the knee first.

“Fuck!” John cries out, jumping on one leg to take pressure off the injured shin, Dirk takes the opportunity to attack his gut, elbowing him in the stomach.

“Oof,” John falls to the dusty earth clutching his sides and nursing a throbbing lump forming on his shin.

“Wow, Egbert, this is great, it’s almost like I worked up a sweat, just one, one sweat, it's lonely and has rented a single, moving in and starting a new life in the countryside, get it's act together." He gets a far off look, "but hey, that’s better than some toddlers can do.” He’s mocking him, John is starting to see red, first Dirk moved in on Roxy without any real interest, and then he blocked off John like it was personal duty. What was this guys deal?

“A toddler huh? Well, that’s okay, cause you're about to be schooled.”

Roxy laughs from up on her perch, and Dirk rolls his eyes.

“YOU. Are. Such. a. Dork.” Roxy calls out, going as far as to blow him a kiss, “but seriously, maybe at some point I wanted "da boi’s" to be fighting over me, but this is totes stupid as hell. Especially when one DOESN'T WANT ME. Cut this out Dirky, I know what’s up, okay? Let's talk. No need to beat dis dork to a pulp.”

“He’s not going to beat me to a pulp,” John responds sourly. “And this is about honor now.”

“This is some machismo bully wash.” Jane comments just loud enough.

John picks up his hammer anyway.

“You can't really win.” Dirk says plainly, not even smugly, just like the factual robot he is. John is done with factual robots.

“Prove it.” Color rises in Dirks cheeks, he pushes it down, and rushes John,

Clang.

Metal against metal clash, sword vs hammer trying to push one another down to the limit, John plants his feet and pushes, and pushes hard against Dirks solid stance. Dirk starts to budge, his feet skitting in the dusty earth, John feels elation rising in his veins, he gives a mighty final shove to put Dirk on his ass.

He falls down. And down. And down.

John forgot about the cliff.

“What have you done?” Jane breathes out.

“DIIIRK!” Roxy cries out in anguish, jumping a story down to get to the ground and running towards them in distress. John can just feel the crushing weight of how badly he just fucked up descend on his shoulders, he needs to fix this, he tries to think fast before he has to look Roxy in the eye.

 _Dirk-like things: Swords, puppets, robots,_ _irony,_ _he feels the tug from the inside of robots. ROBOTS, ROBOTS._

===>Robots

 **Zap** , John disappears.

He screws his eyes shut feeling the usual spin of the world vanishing around him, the feeling of falling and emptiness and then the harsh rush of reality surrounding him again, he reappears with a _pop_.

 

He falls feet first into a pile of robots, sparks flying, and wires flailing in the air.

“Ow.” John feels the sharp implant of robot leg dig into his lower back, he’s lucky he’s not on fire.

He lubs his back and looks around the room, it is a messy four by five mechanical graveyard, though it accessorised by a workbench to his right and several towels soaking up an oil spill on his left.

“Uh, hello?” Dirk stands across the room, holding a greasy small robot. What did he expect?

“Dirk?” John gets out anxiously.

“Hey John." He says slowly, "S'up.” He walks over to his side of the workshop in a tank top and smeared with grease black jeans, so pretty normal.

“Quick, how old are you?” John asks in a hurry.

“Woah, isn't that my question?  What were you even thinking about to get here?”

“Robots.”

“Well" he pauses, "you're in the right place kid.” He sounds sarcastic, but not biting, this Strider is much less hostile towards him, there was hope yet he guessed.

“So you...make it?” He had to be clear this wasn't an alternate timeline and his Dirk wasn't dead and Roxy didn't hate him forever.

“You're going to have to be more specific.” He gives him a cheeky sideways smile and pulls him up from the pile by the hand.

“Okay, do you remember falling off a cliff?”

“Oh… that.”

“Yes that! What were you thinking about?” John asks desperately. He has to set this right. Dirk doesn't say anything, calmly scratching the back of his neck.

“Do you want to some coffee? Tea?” He looks him up and down, “juice box?”

“I’m almost 20,” he defines resolutely.

“Coffee then?”

“Sure.” John accepts a little belligerently, “wait no, tell me the how the cliff things work out.”  
“It works out man, chill, time is your bitch, and I'm obviously still here.” He leads them to an adjacent room where a small table is set up around a very messy kitchen, and weapons shop he assumes as it’s littered with gears, swords, and other mechanical junk.

“Nice place,” he comments, old habits of striking out at the dude kicking in.

“Thanks, setup just for you champ.”

“How old are you for real?”

“Around...26 I guess? Your 19 I gathered, so yeah, no spoilers.”

“Don’t care, I sort of fucked up recently, can you just help me get out this actually?”

He sighs, and pours the two of them some coffee.

“It works out, in fact, tell Jane I say hi.”

“What?”

“Whatever man, it’s just, how’s that part of the timeline?”

“Good-ish, I suppose, you were about to die, but besides that....Jane. Wait, _is_ Jane pregnant? They were freaking out about it all day,” the least he could do was get some information out this misadventure.

“19? No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?” His eyebrows skyrocket, he can't even imagine any of his friends having kids, sure they teased Jane, but not seriously.

“Oh wow, oops, spoilers.” He does not sound sincere at all, and actually tips his head to a picture of Jane with two young kids held in her arms, chubby little brunettes with bright blue eyes.

It was unreal.

John glances around the images, he spots a woman in a white sweater holding a young wiggling child in a cat outfit.

“Is that…?” It was Roxy

“Okay, actually that is TMI,” he puts his fingers in front of his face, “don't look unless you want to just psyche yourself the fuck out for the future.”

“This is so weird,” John report bitterly, mostly to himself. This older Dirk shrugs.

“Don't stress about i-” before he can finish his cool dude words of wisdom they hear a distant wordless cry of rage and fall of several objects.

Dirk takes out his sword even quicker than his younger self did, proving to still be a pretty hard dude, John hears him mutter “already?” under his breath.

The wail increases, and the number of objects falling multiplies.

“Are you going to explain this or should I call the ghostbusters, I can also do impromptu exorcisms from my studies of them,”

“He doesn't seem to be getting out right now, maybe next time, or whenever I need someone to quote awful movies at me while I let ghosts actually eat me.” John sputters in protest, this was the same dick, only he wasn't growling at John like a bear protecting a small cat this time.

Dirk was moving to his fridge already, opening it to reveal layer upon layer of green slime in a pie tin. Slime pies.

John snorts out his nose, “and suppose Gamzee’s here and ready to actually physically eat all of us like the psychotic clown he is.”

“That sounds about right.” He replies as he takes out one of the pies, placing it in the microwave and pressing for 15 seconds. John gulps, he was hoping it was a joke.

“Gamzee is here.”

Dirk sighs, “yeah he’s here, someone has to watch the guy.”

“I thought he died? Like really, really dead.” John remembers the brain-staining image of Terezi splitting the guy in half with her cane-sword. It was one of things he tried to repress, alongside every other image the game ingrained in his head.

“Nope. That or the game brought him back to life just for shits and giggles in this timeline. He was actually pretty normal and high as shit for a couple years. Then he wasn’t. But yeah, spoilers.” Dirk shrugs, obviously not caring what he divulged to John at this point.

“Why is he here?” Of all places. It’s not like Gamzee or Dirk even had a conversation in John’s living memory. The timer goes off on the microwave.

“He use to circulate, like someone watched him each week to stop the religious cult building or bloody rampages or whatever. I became the most available one.”  He says the last part in a very low voice, “I’ll be right back.”

Dirk drags himself to a boarded up door John hadn't noticed and started unlocking several locks and unlatching the boards, he does it so fast John is a little taken back, Gamzee had been there long enough for him to get so good at it.

John waits patiently as Dirk closes the door behind him, and enters into the next room to take care of Gamzee, noises, grunts and other shuffling of material follows. John cringes at every bang, but is relieved to find it subside in short order.

Then he waits again, five minutes, seven. He starts to look around the home much more critically. It was a real mess, robot parts liter the area with some laundry even scattered about- a real bachelor pad to put it nicely, or owned by someone who stopped caring to put it another way. It didn't help he didn't remember his own, younger, Dirk every being this careless.

It is a very empty space despite the clutter, there were not recent pictures of Dirk, just images of friends from the past or family photos. (John tried his best to avoid the fridge and scattered images, especially with the hint of an older Roxy...and himself.)

He fails. There is Kanaya and Rose on the Empresses stairs entering some sort of new troll palace. Roxy- Jake showing his young son a handgun as Jane frowns in the background. Roxy and- Karkat in a red trimmed black cloak surrounded by a crowd of admirers, Dave in the background handing out leaflets. Roxy and hi- Another one of Dave, but this time with a young Jade in the foreground wearing a labcoat, the rest of the photo is obscured by a different photo of a smiling Terezi holding up a degree. Roxy and- Roxy and himself with a sunny child, small and beautiful. He has a daughter.

“Sorry about that.” Dirk finally returns, John snaps his head to attention, trying not stare and be transfixed on the photos again.

“No problem!” Dirk seems a little more grudging to approach him this time, John doesn't like it, “long time then, he didn't sell you any potions did he?”

“No.” He responds sharply, “but he did suggest that I think really hard about what I was thinking about when I almost died from the Roxy-territory control event.”

“Me? Territory control? You couldn’t leave us alone!” John finally voiced the frustration he’s been dealing with for weeks, “you were such a needy boyfriend.”

“I-!” he roars, but then he takes a deep breath in, Dirk’s shoulders even wilt as he deflates, “I'm arguing with a child… I missed her, are you happy? Still do.”

John is taken back by his sudden honesty. He wasn't used to this.

“N-not really. I mean, I get it, I was a friendship thief. It’s hard!” He babbles out disjointedly.

“Oh my god, _it’s hard_ , I don't need a therapist man, just told me I need to be more honest, so I am.”

“Who said?”

“No one.” He responds curtly, “I'm just trying to be real, man. Whatever, I was thinking about Jake.” Dirk is being so blunt John can barely keep up, this wasn't the Strider behavior he put his faith in.

“Jane just had her first pregnancy scare. I was thinking about Jake. And Jane. And them being a huge fucking thing in my face. So, also when I was fighting you, hadn't really gotten the “don’t fucking fight every punk when you have a hint of emotion.” He sounds bitter, he sounds like he hasn't had many people to talk to, John feels like it’s too much pressure to fix this, but he decides he should fix his Dirk first, like stop him from dying.

“Jake, okay, I can do that. Jake.”

He thinks about Jake, comics, guns, his dorky grin, how much he looked like himself, him with Jane, erg, this was weird. Dirk gives him one last sober, despondent, stare, this wasn't the future John envisioned.

He concentrates on that one night, concentrate on any one thought Dirk could have had.

===> Jake

It doesn’t work. He keeps thinking about Jake continuously, it’s weird and isn't working.

“Uh,” he starts as it didn't work again, “did you have another one you could have been thinking of?”

Dirk lifts his chin and stretches his neck, “try 'the ground'.”

“Haha.” John scowls at the guy, but closes his eyes again anyway, concentrating.

 

===>The Ground

John suddenly finds himself hurtling towards the ground ten feet up, Dirk is splayed out falling beside him, his calculating eyes darting around in panic. John grabs his wrist before he knows what's going on and thinks about the last thing he was concentrating on.

===> Jake

Shit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm enjoying writing the story and appreciate kudos and the positive feedback


	4. Jane===> Giraphes

Sebastian and Laura excitedly pull on their child leashes, straining Janes wrist trying to escape from the bonds of the blue tether. Jane yanks on it firmly, but gently, mothers must be both...from what she knew from TV.

“I want to see the giraffe! THE GIRAFFE mommy.” Laura calls out running out ahead, struggling the most against the cord while Sebastian is transfixed on a caterpillar taking apart a leaf. Watching a caterpillar while a cat-beast Lusus is right next to him. Jane already used up all of allotted eye rolls directed at her children for the day, so she instead presents a tight smile and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s move onto to see the giraffes sweetheart,” 10/10, good mothering.

“icecream.” He repeats for the third time.

“YES, ICECREAM TOO.” Her daughter was very loud, and the sun was making Jane rather cross, inherent things.

“No icecream.” They’d be hyper for hours. And hours. “Animals.” Jane gestures at the zoo around them, which had been successfully distracting the whole party, if only for three hours.

“GIRAFFES AND ICE CREAM.” Laura begins to cheer exuberantly, Jane messages the bridge of her nose. She looks out at jungle exhibit to their left, a strange double-mouthed cat lusus within, her chest tightens at the sign announcing EXOTIC JUNGLE ANIMALS: ADVENTURE FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY.

“You know what, let’s take a break from the animals, ice cream sounds good.”

“Yay!” Laura explodes, jumping up and down, Sebastian gives her a faint, but bright smile in her general direction.

Jane lightly pulls on the leash, and reaches the next concession stand without anyone tripping or insulting passing patrons. Lord the day _was_ redeemable.

She buys three icecreams, two chocolate, one vanilla and managed to procure a bench. Jane licks guiltily at her own icecream, it had been six years and she still hadn't lost her pregnancy weight, granted it was twins, but it certainly didn't make her feel better.

She’s trying to block out the majority of her children’s squabbling when she hears someone call her name. She tries to block that out too, she’s not in the mood.

“Jane!” Someone calls again, Jane turns, it’s definitely John, not her John, but it was hard to ever keep them all straight anyway, “Jane!”

Both a younger Dirk and a young John approach her, John out of breath and jogging up to her, Dirk calmly following after in no hurry.

“John, hello... I assume you were accidently time hopping?” She’s seen this before.

“Huh? Yeah, right on the nose.” He replies with a goofy grin, "I guess this isn't new,"

“Not so much.” She says with a hint of good cheer, it was so nice to interact with someone remotely her own age. Or close enough.

Laura gasps, “uncle John!” she calls, Jane wishes she wouldn’t.

“Uncle? Oh my God, sweet.” He pats the small girls head, Jane was sure this was messing with the timeline, but that was not new either.

“John, these are Laura and-”

“Sebastian!” John turns to Seb excitedly.

“You did it! You two actually got to name your children like this, mine is Casey right? Right?” He seems way to excited for the amount of dork that actually went into her 21 year old decisions. God she had been so young.

Dirk arrives as well, staring at the children with just a hint of bewilderment captured in a single eyebrow arch. It was good to see him too.

“Is there a reason you two stopped by? Not that the zoo isn't a lovely place, but you don't usually dwaddle around.”

Dirk replied first, “we showed up at your house, you were just leaving, didn’t know where you went.”

“We called up Roxy on your phone if you don’t mind.” Jane didn't remember telling Roxy about the zoo, but the girl _was_ much more entrenched in the grape vine then she was.

“Is Cat going to come down?” Sebastian asks at the mention of Roxy.

“No Seb.”

“Jane.” Dirk speaks up again, “do you remember what you were thinking about the night that me and John fell off a cliff. Mostly me, falling off.” A tension crackles between the boys,

“I went to get you,” John huffs under his breath, they exchange a glare, Jane eyes the two warily, more _kids_.

“YOU FELL OFF A CLIFF!” Laura interjects, loudly. Always loudly. Jane touches her forehead, and closes her eyes.

“A small one.” Jane would say Dirks voice tried to be reassuring, only it was too exceptionally flat.

“NO!” Laura says in amazement, “that’s what Laura Croft does. But with swinging.”

This wasn't going to work.

“Could we talk over here?” Jane asks politely to John.

“Sure,” John says in his most John-esque friendliness.

The kids try to follow, she puts a hand out in front of them, “Dirk dear, could you watch the kids for a second?”

“Me?” He asks in confusion. Sure, it wasn't ideal, but her Dirk watched the kids all the time. When he wasn't busy. He was pretty busy.

“Sure, I’ll just be telling John on how to get back properly.”

“Right.” Dirk says, “gnarly.” The sarcasm drips from his lips as he stares at the kids awkwardly, Jane takes John away quickly.

“Let’s go and sit in the shade.” She suggests, feeling about ten times lighter.

“So, what’s up? Think of a word?”

“Maybe,” she replies obtusely, “although I have another suggestion.”

John squints his eyes staring up at her through the sun,

“The time hopping causes,” she stops herself, “ _can cause_ a lot of issues. But times have changed, G-Lab has been working on something for awhile now to reverse...whatever you have.”

She was thinking fast here, any outing with adults would be great, and hey, maybe productive.

“Wouldn't that mess up the timeline?”

“No more than it already,” spoilers, “could be. We can make this your last trip buster!”

“I guess now might be as good as any time to do that.” He replies hesitantly.

“Yes! We can go back to my place first, then head over to the lab.”

“Will Roxy be there?”

“Probably,” Jane was getting excited, “c’mon.”

They stroll back to Dirk and inform him of their plan, he looks wholly displeased but agrees to stay with the kids around the park anyway, Jane thanks him emphatically.

“We're going to see the giraffes.” Is the last thing he says before they leave.

Jane hurries John off and out of the park, he follows like a small dog trained to trail larger dogs.

Jane ties to ask him about his timeline, but he mentions Jake and it’s too much. She ends up turning to venting.

“And all the teacher did was repeat how much Sebastian isn't paying attention in class. I just can’t believe what a total witch she was, and not even the Jade kind! And then there’s my business, and I can't just run it alongside riding the kids to do their homework every night, regardless of the fact they already have after school work, it’s ridiculous.”

John nods sympathetically.

“The business is practically underwater now too since I can’t keep it open all morning, it’s a bakery it’s supposed to be open in the morning! But no, can’t even afford a morning nanny anymore.” She’s so frustrated, the steam venting out like she was a kettle set to boil, “and it’s like I have to do this all by myself with every other nanny either an alien or a complete mess, scratch that I do have to do it all on my own. Did you know I used to make a profit? A whole profit! It was going so well, and now all I do is the kids, Laura did that, and Seb’ did this. Never have twins John.”

He pauses in his nodding,

“Doing it...on your own?”

Oh. Right. Young John.

“It just feels like that sometimes,” she smiles weakly. They walk back silently from there, reaching her little townhouse in under three minutes.

Jane jimmies her keys into the lock and forces the door open,

“The house is sort of a mess, sorry about that, I couldn't just get some of those kids that don't touch anything, the ones that just stare off into space.” Jane is lamenting again, and wishes briefly that John could see a better side to her over the Ms. Grumps. Too late.

“But, here’s the home,”

“Yeah, we were here briefly before, can't believe we missed you,”

“That is odd...What exactly were you thinking about if you don't mind me asking?”

John goes red in the face, “n-nothing.” He’s crap liar, but Jane doesn't push it.

“Alright mister, let me just get my contacts for the lab, maybe a snack, do you want to come up stairs?” Jane is feeling somewhat strange inside, but her this made sense in her head.

“Alright.” He agrees brightly. This was easy. “But again, there was this night where we went to the club and you and Roxy went to the dance floor and me and Dirk ended up fighting.”

“Over Roxy, I think I remember.” She says sourly, remembering the night mostly as just her first pregnancy scare at 19, why she had them at all just showed how irresponsible they were, how little sex ed they had, ha. Thinking remotely about Jake made Jane clench her jaw. This was not how it was supposed to go.

They get up to Jane's room, the cleanest place in the house.

“Sort of,” he finally affirms, “I think Dirk was going through a thing. I guess me too.”

“He’ll go through a lot of those.” Dirk was touchy like that, it was a good thing they got on really well now, when they did actually see each other that is.

“I just saw your version! He seemed," he searches for a word, "okay?”

“He’s okay…” Lonely was that last word from Roxy, “but that night was something else! I think I puked three times! Mostly from the drink, trying to keep up with Roxy was not a good idea.” It’s a good thing she wasn't pregnant after all.

John laughs at her and the idea of her getting sick.

“Maybe during the fight could have been a good idea.”

“Yeah, right on top of two of you! Honestly you two were so dumb.” Dumb _kids_. But the matter is already settled in her head.

“You got that right.” They both laugh again, it’s not even that funny.

“It was just a Jake thing, it’s always a Jake thing amiright? That kid was always the center of so much drama!” John declares, making another joke, trying to connect to her. Jane however can see his prankster gambit visibly go down as she purses her lips and squints her eyes. A long stretch of mawing silence spans between them like candlelight. John breaks it first.

“I’m such a bonehead,” he hits himself in the head, “you were just thinking about him real hard, and it doesn't look like he's here, gosh I'm sorry Jane.”

“Jake is gone.”

John hangs his arms, not looking her in the eye.

“He’s gone, which, ha, I thought Dirk would be happy about, but lucky for me he is just as miserable. He didn't leave us for someone else, he’s just gone, gone, gone.” Jane is complaining, ranting, again.

“He was the center of so much drama, because he was suck a dick! Suck a huge dick...dork.” John briefly laughs at dick dork.

“Then he traipsed off leaving me with half a business, half our money, and all of our kids. We had 2 half kids here!”

“Half?” John says laughing uncomfortably still.

“It’s complicated.” John stiffens at Jane harsh tone, “he left on this day.” She finishes softly.

“Woah there buster, I wasn't trying to pry. It’s okay Jane.”

“No, buster!” She exclaims heatedly, no buster. Her heart pangs like an airsoft gun ricocheting through a metal cavern. She sighs, counting her breaths to try to calm down.

She tries to break the tense mood, “but you’re a nice boy John.” She states.

“Sure you leave now and then, but you always come back,” she leers slightly over him, feeling a little queasy after all, covered in oil from head to toe.

“Oh sheesh, Jane, maybe someone nice hasn't showed up for you yet, but you've still got it, and really deserve someone, it sounds like you've been working hard anyway.” He looks nervous, but sounds completely sincere. She almost starts to cry, if only he knew how rotten she felt, she was becoming. She doesn't cry, she leans and kisses him, holding his shoulders tightly.

He relaxes for a second into the affection, Jane feels the thrill of winning for a fleeting moment, then he his whole body tenses again like a coiling snake.

“You’re my Nanna.”

“Not right now.”

John heaves, blinks, and then runs out the door with his tail between his legs. She felt it was wrong, knew it was, but having something good, bright like a young John, felt so right. She didn't pursue him,

“Oh! I was thinking about puking, was the whole night. Just like...just like our joke.” She yells the first part loudly, but peeters off by the end.

She frowns irritatedly, aware Dirk would get back here with the kids any moment. She picks up the phone and puts her hands down her pants, she dials fast, boy she needed a quickie.

The phone rings three times and then he picks up.

“Hello?”

“Quick my kids are coming back from the zoo.”

“Why miss English…”

“I’m wearing lacey underwear, I stroke your face….”

 


	5. ===> GET SOME SPACE: How to Walk in on Someone

Update: It is five months later, John had bounced around the past four different times, it wasn't fun, and he was really starting to lash out at his friends. As in he could have just broken one of his relationships.

John feels like he’s suffocating. Boy he really fucked up. First his grandma outright kissed him and then he came back and harassed Karkat into leaving, straight up leaving. Terezi was pissed at him, Vriska applauded him (never a good sign) when she found out, Dave gave him a cool kid frown of disapproval, and he was pretty sure Rose was trying to play his therapist.

“John!” speak of the devil.

“Not now Rose,” he asserts back to her, “it’s not a good time.”

“Honestly,” she runs in huff up the next flight of stairs, gasping as she gets to the top of the building, she holds her side, “one moment.”

“Take all the time you need,” he’s not being nice.

“John, you need to come back,” she says between breaths, “Karkat will calm down.”

“Pfft, I doubt it, he seemed pretty far gone to me.”

“You'll feel better, can’t just” she exhales, swallowing hard, she was such a wisp at this point, “let it stand like this.”

“Rose, I need space.”

“John, it’s okay, you can wait it out, you're going to be alright... but he’s getting on a bus,”

“He...really is?”

“You don't have to talk, but seeing him will make you both feel better.”

“Shouldn't a therapist tell me to ‘do what my heart tells me’” he asks sceptically.

She smiles coyly at him, “yeah, the bad ones.” She pauses stiffly,

“Now, get back out there!”

He tilts his head, “why?”

“Do I need to make you chart of reasons John?” She asks slowly, “or perhaps draw you up a list?”

“Okay, I get it.”

“One, is that he’s considering leaving, two is that, what are all those speeches you give about? Frond-ship?”

“I get it!”

She puts her hand on his shoulder, and gives him a sympathetic look, he returns the gesture, they turn around to go back down stairs.

“Frond-ship?”

“It’s a very important feature of botany I hear, _growing_ relationships.” She pronounces lightly.

“I think you mean...bro-tany.” She frowns, he laughs gleefully.

They are about to hop down the stairs, and for John to face the weight of hurt on his friends faces when he spots Karkat in the crowd anyway.

He runs to hang off the balcony, “hey!”

The boy stands at some sort of stop, bag in hand, oh shit.

“Can he hear me?” He asks Rose, she shrugs but pulls on his sleeve, “Karkat!”

 

“We should really try to see him in person.” She pushes anxiously.

“Karkat!” He tries again.

The other boy looks up with his blood red eyes piercing him all the way up on the fifth floor. Everything about it features an all-encompassing scorn, hurt, hatred, John physically grabs at the front of his shirt, balling the fabric around his throat up.

He wishes a thousands times he hadn’t accused Karkat of smothering everyone around him. He wishes he hadn't told him that he was living vicariously living through them, he vividly remembers calling him a “micro-managing jerk.” Oh no.

Karkat continues to stare like the Mona Lisa in front of a marching Mussolini, angry, unblinking, destructive.

“Oh no,” he murmurs under his breath.

A bus pulls up to the stop, John has to go talk to him! He has to go, he has to-  
Karkat gets on the bus, still maintaining eye contact with the other boy, no flipping him off, all calm fury, John is terrified.

“-if we move right now.” He realizes Rose has been talking to him.

“I need some space.” He squeaks, “I need, not this!”

“No, John, stop glowing, we need to go down there.”

He gasps, “I can't do this right now!”

“This is not what I prescribed, ha, John, John, stop being translucent, stop glowing, st- ”

===> Get some Space

He opens his eyes and finds it’s as just as dark as when he had them closed, John gropes around for a door and finds miscellaneous objects like shoes and coat hangers instead, when he comes across a mop he concludes he’s in a closet.

He bumps head first into the door after he ends up crawling forward on his knees.

“Ow,” he says rubbing his head, he paws his way to the door handle and opens it stiffly, annoyed by pretty much everything in this place, and time, he had to stop doing this.

He immediately hears heavy breathing and the sound of a squeaking chair, he gulps and hopes someone is exercising vigorously on an elliptical. He has no other choice though, this is most likely one of his friends, and most likely the only way to get back, as it always is.

Maybe he could go back to when before Karkat left? Maybe give himself a kick-punch in the face?

He makes the fateful decision to open up the one and only other door in the hallway, distracted by the question of what Karkat could have been thinking of.

“Uhhhh~” I vivid moan that can only mean one thing transmits through the air like an electric wave sending Johns hairs on end, shit he shouldn't have done this, but it was too late the automatic door had been activated.

Terzi is straddling Vriska in a swivel chair unmistakably gyrating on her lap while screwing her eyes shut, moaning. Without her clothes on.

John tries to force the automatic doors shut again as his face heats up like it’s the fourth of July.

 

“J-John?” Terezi must have sniffed him out already, her voice is peaked and expectantly wobbly, but not without a hint of humor. Nooo.  
The door finally closes, very slowly, with a _whumph_.

“what the fuck!” Vriska exclaims,

“it’s John!”

“What the fuck,” John hears the sound pittering hands and zipping clothes through the door.

“Hahaha, this is the time hopping, I didn’t know it could happen to us,” Terezi says not without enthusiasm, and by that he meant she was far too excited after he walked in on them.

“Well, come in then!” Vriska demands, raising her volume for him to hear all too clearly.

John dry swallows, this was the opposite of what he wanted. But they were both at the ordeal, Vriska in the other room but present, so they had to be thinking of something.

“He’s just going to wait outside like a sad wriggler isn’t he?” Vriska voices in harsh amusement, “I suppose humans are weirder about this sort of thing,” she ends airily.

“Most people are Vriska!” Terezi bites back, their Kismesitude obviously still going strong, ugh, “but I will come out there John, don’t think I won’t.”

Indignant about the being called a pansy he waves his hand in front of the motion detector again and gets the door to open, walking in as resolutely as he can muster.

Terezi is standing by the controller of a huge airship, and Vriska is splayed provocatively out on a small cot laid out on the floor, with only a pair of loose pants and an open shirt on.

They are in space.

John stares out the ship window, mystified at the boundless expanse of black dotted with bursts of whites and yellow outside.

“Were you here for the show, time boy?” Vriska teases him immediately, all eight of eyes of hers a mix of scorn for interrupting them and laughing at how uncomfortable he was.

He rips his head away from the view to look at the girls again, Vriska is as thin and wiry as ever, but now with a mature gait and at least two new scars, Terezi appears mostly the same as well, only she looks to have a paunch now, the kind that middle aged men get with a beer gut. It's somehow not unattractive.

“Not at all!” His voice breaks, oh my God, “this was unexpected...in fact where even are we?” He’d never been this far out before, stayed on Origin or gone to the past in the game up to this point.

“Unexpected?” She breathes out of her nose harshly, “how is that even possible,”

“you're in quadrant nine with us! Illegal space zone, ripe for apprehension of criminals and the deliverance of justice!” Terezi speaks over Vriska, they shared a charged look over the interruption, John would like to leave.

He’s glad their basically the same he thinks to himself, even, what, ten years later? They have the same shark-tooth grin, and air of blunt confidence.

“Do either of you remember the night Karkat tried to leave?” John starts.

Terezi frowns at the question,

“tried to?” Vriska asks, “What time period are we talking here young John?”

“We haven't seen Karkat in person in some time,” Terezi says firmly, if not very seriously,

“that seems,” it’s John’s turn to frown, “unfortunate.”

“Enforcing the law takes precedent John,” Terezi exclaims raising her cane in the air, “and it takes a lot of time to travel without wormholes, no time to go back” she pauses to stare outside dramatically, “which they aren't a lot of out here. John imagine a whole space without wormholes. That is here,” John imagines a noir lighting framing her.

“So the law thing works out Terezi?” He asks with polite curiosity.

“Of course!”

“Pfft, she’s just talking big because you’re here, she hasn’t caught a criminal in sweeps!” Terezi kicks at the chair Vriska is lounging on causing her to bounce up on the seat.

“Hey!”

“It hasn’t been that long,” she whispers harshly, “I’m waiting for the big fish! The big fish!”

“Okay,” John says slowly, he’s started to get worried about how all his friends in the future turn out.

“You couldn’t even capture me!” Vriska cackles poking her in the sides, in what John assumes is flirting.

“I’ve told you, I’m in it for the long run,” she grins like she wants to eat Vriska up, John suddenly feels like he’s invisible, “one day you’ll be sitting in my cockpit, eating you’re disgusting lavender grub sauce and thinking about your crimes AND I WILL SWOOP IN, hehehe,” Terezi lets out a gleeful loud laugh.

“Alright then,” John wonders if this is how people feel when they were with him and Roxy when they were in their first couple months of dating, he of course brought this on himself.

Vriska has a sneer and visible disdain on her curled lip, she grabs Terezi’s face by the chin and yanks it an inch from her own,

“I hope you do, I hope you swoop and bear down on me, so I can have the final chance to crush you, and at the last second when you think you’ve got me, you’ll look me in the eye and realize you can’t do it, can’t live without someone to keep you awake at night, without me” she gestures at her partially clothed body, “but I will. I will be able to do it.”  
They smash their mouths together in an open mouth kiss, starting where they stopped off tearing at each other's lips like John wasn't there.

“SO DO YOU GUYS KNOW WHERE KARKAT IS….was,” he finishes weakly, but he has to get out of here, now or never...or waiting to later and having an unfortunate boner.  
The girls look back up at him in a range of disgust to contained rage.

“Not here,” Vriska articulates, “and very much so,” she eyes Terezi’s face, John can feel the underlying extended torment beneath the words. She nods shortly in agreement.

“It was on the… like 9th sweep old for you guys? He was being a pain and like, threatened to break up with...uh, us? or leave like he always did when he got really stressed,” John was rambling, he had to get through to them, or least distract them until their lady nethers cool down, of course it’s too late for him to notice Terezi getting paler and paler.

“We remember John.” She confirms, “but we don’t do this anymore.”

“What?” John says cocking his eyebrow up questioningly.

“ ‘We,’ no way, John I was thinking about-”

“It’s not a good idea!” She gives Vriska a sharp look,

“You were the one to come up with the original system!” He wails at her,

“yes, and I think it makes things worse,”

“What worse?” John is so confused, “how would I get home otherwise??”

“it just makes things worse, and it is yours to figure out,”

“you were the only one to come back with any powers,” Vriska remarks bitterly, “his to deal with, okay, I get that.”

“That is so unfair guys!” John close to whines, “do you want me stuck here? Hell, do you want Karkat to leave? Helping me helps him, you're still friends even if you're so far away.” Terezi is still very pale.

“Look John, you can get back on your own!...I’ll be right back.” Terezi exits the room.

“Oh great,” John gestures at the door, palms turned up, he can’t believe the girls are being difficult. He turns to Vriska, ready for her to be pissed at him for upsetting Terezi,

“That was so great!” Or not. Vriska is grinning ear to ear, “she is going to be so pissed for later tonight, you really did it to her John!” She looks excited.

“I should bring up Karkat more often.” She concludes,

“Bad break up?” John flinches at the idea, but he really is curious,

“nah, just stopped talking to each other, out here in the void of space,” she raises her voice for Terezi to hear on the small ship, “she couldn’t call him anymore, because she hadn’t caught up to him!”

John furrows his brow at her,

“Guilt. Not successful at all,” Vriska finishes with a shrug, still taunting Terezi from several feet away.

“And what have you done out here?” John accuses irritably, he forgot how mean she could be.

“You mean what am I doing out here?”

“Well, yeah,” he was a little curious,

“going to cash in on the Time Worm,” she says with a smug air.  
John physically rolls his eyes, “it’s to see good you've picked up some religion Vriska. Found space-worm Jesus n'all,”

“Not like that!!!!!!!!” John can just envision the eight exclamation points after the sentence.

“So you're just going to capture a magic worm?”

The “Infinite One” religion was based around a long space entity that was all knowing, eating all of existence indiscriminately, equally, and when he came inevitably for you the worthy would be given an ideal world within the worm, while the unworthy would be digested. It was some wacky stuff.

Though no more wacky than some kids creating the universe through a video game that made them bread cosmos-frogs. Should they start a religion?

“No, you see, it’s real, and I am going to gain alllllll the treasure from it that it’s eaten.”

“Go on.” John replies sceptically, distracted from his main goal.

Vriska huffs indignantly and brings up a map with a colored black worm with a gaping mouth,

“it’s as a big as a sun, so they've reported, and it does eat things, but in a non-spirit way! It just eats them and they get time locked inside the worm while it slowly draws out their energy,” she sounds delighted, and ready for a monster hunt, figures this would happen.

“But if you know you’re way around, you can cut your way into the beast,” she demonstrates a cutting motion with her hands, eyes wild, “sneak around the time pockets and grab as much treasure as you can carry from what it’s eaten before your frozen yourself!”  
He couldn’t imagine Vriska picking up any other kind of hobby.

“Suuure,” he is still sceptical, “I mean there is no proof it’s not omnipotent God either, but that doesn't mean either of those things are not true.”

“There are witnesses!” She is always emphatic about everything, “in fact I talked to one myself, he made it back himself right from the worms belly,”

“Well... if is true, you're the one to defeat it,” He replies still with a unconvinced, but supportive, tone,

“It _is_ true, ugh, you’re just like everyone else, with disbelief or think I’m worshipping space nonsense like the rest of the lowbloods,” she looks irately off into the expanse of space, “but when I find it...when I become the richest trol in the universe, well, one of us will have be a sorry and one of us will own a planet."  
John doesn't respond, she seems so sure.

Terezi suddenly enters back into the room,

“we need to contact Sollux, _now_ ,” she expresses feverishly while holding up a multi-colored monitor.

“what is it?” Vriska asks reluctantly, obviously annoyed at the interruption in her monologue on the Time Worm.

“Wormhole!” Terezi asserts, “while we were busy talking to John,” he huffs at her, “an anomaly sprang up, someone is coming down this way.”

“And you want to talk to Sollux again?” Vriska whines, Terezi rushes past Vriska and presses an intercom,

“hailing Interstellar Travel Coordination, helmsmen Sollux Captor, hailing Interstellar Travel Coordination, helmsmen Sollux Captor,” Terezi repeats it three times into a mic.

“What ith it?” A face appears on the screen of a very annoyed older Sollux in a some type of headgear.

“We’re in quadrant nine, there is some sort of incoming wormholes,”

“That’th impotthible! We didn’t divert any holeth in that direction.”

“I know! Just tell us where it will appear and where it is from,” Terezi seems both out and in her element at the same time.

“Tch, it’s probably a stolen wormhole diverter, and some low level thieves, not worth our, your, time.”

“Quite Vriska,”

“Fine, one thecond,” Sollux looks downward and his eyes start glowing as he starts communing with some sort of interface.

“it appearth,” he concentrates, “it’th from Alpha Two quadrant… it’th coming in fast on left your TZ, Vriska…John.” He looks at John questioningly, he shrugs unabashedly, like in a ‘what can ya do?'

“Woooooooo!” Vriska whoops, “that is a rich sector! These guys probably may payload, let’s go get them.”  
Terezi nods solemnly, “for law.”

“And money!”

Sollux gives her a dry look, “you’ll have to bring everything you confiscate from them, if they are thieves.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’ll keep her in line.”

John is unsure on what to do, or what kind of space adventure this is turning out to be.

“Soooo, space fight?” He inquires.

“Hell yeah, John, it’ll be a blowout!” Vriska ruffles his hair while grabbing onto his shoulder, even Terezi looks excited again,

“Shields are up! Weapons at the go,”

“What do you launch at them?” He didn't know a lot about space fights, space stuff, space.

“Destructive shit!”

“Cool.”

Terezi grabs onto some controls while Vriska rubs her hands together like a land baron confiscating peasant farms,

“Here it cometh,” Sollux warns through the speakers, John looks around anxiously, eyes darting across the blank space.

He glances, on the left, yes, a distorted part of velvet darkness opens up,  a purple contortion of the empty black region of the sky. He shakes from anticipation, or something else.

There it is, a rough looking huge red ship, slick and shiny except for scorch marks on its side.

“Okay, step one in legislating John, the guilty are always going to run, but you are going to be faster.” Terezi bounces up and down on the heels of her foot, eyeing the ship like a puma about to pounce. That doesn't work so well.

"First we hail them. Give them a chance to surrender and repent for their dastardly crimes. Then we nab them."

"Wait," Vriska’s eyes go wide, “it’s heading straight for us!”

“That doesn’t sound normal.” John comments nervously,

“it’th not,” Sollux reports over the speakers,

“No,” Terezi’s mouth hangs up slightly, her face going very pale, she jerks the steering to the right, turning the whole ship around and jostling everyone on board,

“We are not turning around” Vriska says in disbelief, baring her fangs through a snarl,

“Vriska I need you to transport back to your vessel, and John, I need you to get the hell out of here.”

“UH,” he stares back around, and can just make out the ship behind them heading full stop towards them, little balls of light forming at the tips of what appears to be two canons,

“I am assume this very abnormal,” John voices in a high pitched tone,

“let’s just say I recognize that cherry-red ship now,” Terezi comments softly, smally, “and you two need to get out of here!” He gestures irately for them to leave.

“It’s not-” _Bwoom_

Terezi’s entire ship shakes and the sound of metal collapsing internally reverberates around the inner sanctums of the ship, both John and Vriska fall on their asses from the explosion, though Vriska gets back up immediately, if not indignantly.

“Jegus!” Terezi expresses loudly,

“We can’t just run away,” Vriska sounds scandalized,

“this is going to be for the best,” she snarls back, grabbing Vriska's wrist and growling in her face like they are wild animals. Why is this still hot?

John doesn’t have long to ponder such deep questions before another canon beam launches itself at their vessel, Terezi is prepared this time and ducks down, jostling everyone once more.

“I swear.”

 

“I’m staying,” Vriska yells over the increasing noise of one of the engines combusting from the impact, John isn't sure if he wants to follow that sentiment.

“NO!” Terezi barks and suddenly reaches out and pushes a button on Vriska’s suit located in the belt area, Vriska disappears in a swirl of distorted purple, Terezi turns to John next,

“I got this!” He says holding up his hands defensively, “are you going to be okay?” He has to at least be reassured, however hollow the answer might be. He can’t leave his friends to their end if there is something he can do about it.

She gives him a very sunken look, eyes suddenly very tired and mouth small, a part of him expects her to respond with a ‘are any of us?’ or something, but it’s fleeting.

“OF Course I am John! Who do you think I am.”

He slumps his shoulders relief, Terezi really was great no matter how many times she got him almost killed,

“Now think of a word and get out of here,”

“Do you have a word for me?” He asks daringly,

“I’m not playing that, John.”

“Thought I’d give it a shot,” he smiles mischievously at her,

“I hope you know I’d roll my eyes if I had any pupils,”

He starts to laugh when he is interrupted by another direct impact, _bowoomf_

Every bone in his body shakes and his ears ring slightly, he wish he could do something, something that wasn’t just leave, but Terezi gives him a tight look and he concentrates on the first word that comes to mind.

He looks out at the dark expanse of dangerous space,

====> The Night


	6. ==>THE NIGHT: How to be Surprised

John had no idea where he would end up, luckily he had gotten good enough to at least grab onto exclusively his friends thoughts, it was just the time period that was the problem.

He appear-ified on something soft, a cushion he adjusts himself on immediately, he blinks off into the darkness until he can see the outlines of the world around him, it’s night time.

“Hey buuuudy, it’s you.”

“Roxy!” Oh thank Jesus, seeing her was a God send, someone less fucked up and not the middle of space.

He makes his way over to a full grown women on a couch smothering a velvet pillow in her face, soft music plays in the background, she smiles at him dimly.

“Ya here to visit me?” She winks at him, John takes a reprehensive step backward, she laughs,

“just kidding Johnny boy! But you should get over here,” he shuffles over to her couch to awkwardly sit down on a footstool.

“How, uh, old you?” He asks in the routine question, not sure what else to work off of, Roxy blinks at him, he noticed dark circles under her eyes, stamped like half moons under  pretty pink sunrises.

She laughs again, high pitch and unnatural, “come closer,” he leans forward on instinct, but jolts back immediately when she reaches out to touch him.

“leeme feel your cheek,” alright she is not acting normal, her jaw was clenched despite a dopey look on her face, “my John has been gone for two weeks,” she pouts, “I swear this isn't fuckin' creepy.”

John feels vicariously guilty for his older self, leaving, not controlling his powers after all these years.

He leans forward, Roxy immediately latches her wide hands over his face, her eyes light up, “it’s still soft,” she pets it, “so soft!”

John suddenly finds himself pulled into an uncomfortable hug, Roxy dragged him over to the couch and feeling his face like he’s a persian rug and not a human boy who didn’t even moisturize.

“Heehee,” she squishes his face, his entire face, running the pads of her fingers carelessly across his skin, he'd thought it was going to be something sexy, it wasn’t.

“Are you alright?” He finally chirps from within her iron grasp.

“just living the life John, feeling the good things, bein’ myself ” she sounds drunk in her sense of laid-backness but was not slurring her words at all.

It’s only when she slips her hand over his soft middle does he wiggle out of her grasp, “alright, this has been fun, unusual, but, ya know, I should get home,”

She snorts, “what? To 2006?” She looks patronizingly at him, “you'll just stop bein' around in no time again, save my cute younger self some heartache and let ya hang here, yo.”

“That’s not how time travel works,” he responds bitterly.

“Not with us!” She declares, “I’ll give you some choice word in a sec.”

Okay, visiting Roxy really wasn't a bad idea, she really was helpful or at least half intelligent no matter the mood.

“Then...what do you want from me?” His eyes go wide,

“not what you think it is, mmm.” She smothers her face in the velvet pillow again, similarly rubbing it up against her, “not that kinda girl.” She gives him a low but distinct look.

John lets her alone with the pillow when his eyes side glance guiltily along the rest of the room, it is dim in here, but not enough to block out all the pictures.

The cute blonde girl was in pictures again, her smile a wide and toothy one, buck toothed and unabashed.

There were ones of him pouring water on Roxy’s head while she laughed, and ones of him presenting the young blonde girl at least three birthday cakes, he was proud to say she did not look pleased. She was always positive and beautiful, he loved her already, how could he ever leave?

“Like what ya see?” Roxy asks mischievously.

“I love it…” he says slowly, Roxy’s eyes go soft,

“Same as ever…” she murmurs.

They are sharing a very gooey eye exchange and John is considering where this could be going fondly when sharp crying erupts across the house, high pitched and musical.  
“Oh shit, shoot,” Roxy corrects herself midway through and then sways upright, “is Janey even here?”

“Jane,”

“Some of us ain’t always here bub, need second girl backup....” she pauses, “and it’s not like Herb’s all ours.” The last part is said carelessly, but not without unease.

“Not all ours.” John repeats blankly, still trying to piece together the future out from all the hints they drop.

“One sec, Jo-Eg,”

“No.”

“Imma check on the little ‘un.”

John looks around, he had a son too, maybe. The walls are not covered in pictures of small Herb, though he spots one with an unfamiliar baby in it, what even was that though?

Roxy returns shortly, carrying a swaddled chubby child in her arms, John admired the image from afar,

“do you want to go for a walk?” She asks, much less friendly, she looked a little jittery.

“Why- why not,” John gets out.

They descended out a townhouse, familiar in its resemblance to Daves and Karkat's. They walk out into the pebbled streets, the moon full and illuminating the entire area, the second moon rising on the horizon already, he wonders how late it is.

They start out very deliberately, Roxy knows where she’s going. They don’t talk, the night time is oppressive like that, but John sensed something else spanning between them as well. He feels himself droop inside like an unwatered plant at that thought.

Just when John opens his mouth to break to the silence they reach a football fields worth of a ditch that spans in front of their path.

“What’s that?” He asks in wonder, both curious and thankful for something to talk about outside of his family, friends, and other messy engagements.

Roxy shrugs, “Bastion neighborhood, used to be,” her mouth becomes a hard straight line.

John swore everytime he got to the future more aliens were popping up, he heard about new Bastions, they were a pleasant, if not eccentric species, at least roughly humanoid with the exception of height and head shape (triangular).

“Sooo, what’s up with it?” It was like pulling teeth with her.

Roxy turns away and continues their late night stroll, the child in her hands wriggling ever so slightly.

“IDK dude,” she sighs, “one day you're building sideways cute lil’ box crate buildings and the next you’re fighting _The Man_ for not being displaced to Sycamore,” Sycamore was a distant periphery suburb of the city, John blinked, he hadn't heard too much bad about it, “it’s a hard knock life... lol.”  
John eyed Roxy, her deliberately casual tone a mild warning sign.

John peaked into the chasm again, two Eos huddled together in a makeshift gas pit, he shakes his head a little bit.  
“It’s too bad the city doesn't clean up it’s act.”

“Yeah, well, better then them buildings falling down e’ry week is what they said, is just sad is all,”  
she keeps walking, taking a sharp left following the distant din of conversation and voices.

“What were they doing?” He asks after another momentary pause.

“Man, you are out of the loop,” she gives him a playful empty smile, “cultural thing, every holiday or season change thing they KOed their last place and rebuilt, really badly too, but it always looked sick, and their little family’s all came out and gave food n’ stuff. Sugar daddy aliens.”

“You liked them,” he comments softly, Roxy was his girl.

“I like a lot of stuff dude,” she searches and then finds the alley to where ever they are going.

They arrive at a packed sales lot with every other nocturnal species gathering to what John assumed was to yell at each other. He counts a majority of trolls, low and mid bloods, and several Perdue, also nocturnal.

Roxy definitely knows where she’s going and she gestures him along through the crowd, he follows along eyeing all the miscreants around them. Eos, designated salesmen of the planet, call out to them in yellow voices, syrupy and ready to sell. He almost follows.

Roxy grabs him by the collar and hulls him to a little stall built into the side of a house.

“So, uh,” John starts,

“Here, hold Herb, stay here babe,” he thrusts the child into his arms and strolls into the side store with a bounce in her step. Like most times when he follows his friends around in the future, he doesn't know what the hell is going on.

He ponders the developments for a second until Herb starts wiggling unnecessarily.

“Hold up mister,” he says holding the kid at an arms length. It occurs to John they left their daughter at home, oh jeez. Ideas about mistakes drain from his mind when a beam of moonlight strikes Herbert. He pauses and stares, trying to take it all in.

“Okay, Roxy, science experiments are being banned forever when I get back to the past,” he does not know who he’s talking to, but that statement is now true.

Herb was light grey to tanned skin, one little hand sticking out of the swaddle that is webbed and head with a fin and black hair growing out in haphazard tuffs. His eyes were impossibly wide set and almost fully dark.  
Herb blinks at him, he blinks back.

“Roxy!” He calls and bursts into the shop itself, “what, what... _what_?” He points to the maybe-his child.

He walks in on Roxy drinking tea with a woman who looked like she was made of jigsaw puzzle pieces, a disturbing picasso with the makeup to rival any painting.  
He’s not sure what to make of that either.

Roxy contemplates something for a second, stirring her tea mindfully, “wasn't sure how to totes tell you, but was like ‘why not?’” She doesn’t meet his eye, “bt-dubs, this is Veronica, she’s sort of the best.”

“Oh sweetheart,” the women speaks in an accented purr.

John darts his eyes around quickly, the room is bohemian in nature, with scarves and candles placed methodically around, he’s unconcerned until he spots some white pills in a baggy.

“Drugs, what, Roxy? Really?” He’s not sure what to concentrate on first, their mutant baby, the drug addiction (replacing alcohol eegud), or her choice in do-yourself-art friends.

Herb starts crying ever so softly, and John notices has musical and high pitched it sounds, his eyes go wide. Roxy sighs and gets back up to fetch it.

“Chill.” She asserts, “one, Herby’s different, but like still has feelings, and he’s part a'you,”

“Can you explain anything,”

“So many spoilers babe, and like mistakes revealed,”

“I can fix it!”

“Better not,” she sounds very wary at his last suggestion, “and the white pillz are not Alice-Down the Hole ones, well mostly, okay a little acid-y, as in acid, but their legit medical.”

“and you’re drug dealer is a modern art piece,” he remarks disbelievingly and how she justified it.

“They’re for the headaches,” Roxy pouts,

“Aspirin, maybe,” he crosses his arms,

“I spent too much time in the Jyestha sun, they don’t work no mo’.” She looks put out.

“The sun,”

She chews on her lip, “not too spoilery, but it’s real bad for people...and trolls, stay out of it.” She sounds serious.

This place had so many problems John thinks to himself, this is not what they ordered.

“You should go now darling,” the classy drug-lady says, “it’s almost morning, I need my sleep.”

John caught the hint of 'this is awkward, stop having a family breakdown in my living room,' behind her elegant tone. John turns back around to the door in a hurry, Roxy follows  with passing well-wishes to her friend-dealer. John was pissed.

They walk stiffly back to the pit and once they're out of earshot of the bizarre street shops John halts abruptly.

“You’re so much stronger than this Roxy! I just know it,”

Roxy only huffs under breathe, and gives him a look akin to pity.

“It’s not like that pal,”

“and our mutant son,” he gestures wildly at the somehow sleeping babe,

“Dolphin,”

“Oh great, now he’s a dolphin, this is getting more normal by the second.”

“Okay, omg, no, no more, I don't want to talk John,” Roxy finally discloses, turning her back to him.

Johns emotions simmer down, “no, talk to me.”

“You’re just a dumb kid,” she’s looking down into the pit, “don't think you know what’s up,” she snorts, “not that you ever know much of what’s going on.”

“Tell me, I can change stuff, maybe go back, fix it, that's what these powers are for,”

“Yeah, John, better go back, it's not like it matters, it all happens anyway, go back then,” The sun rises every so slightly across a clouded over sky, “like, now.”

“Talk to me?”

Roxy reached her limit, she looks aggressively sober, eyeing him sharply “nothing' to talk about.”

She looks at the horizon with knitted eyebrows, "you can't always come back and expect me to 'splain everything like a trained dog at your beck n' call. It doesn't work like that."

"But-"

" _Don't want to talk_. Don't you get it?"

John never thought he would get to this point with his girlfriend, no communication, no connection. He can feel embarrassed hot tears welling up in his eye sockets, and he was the one that did this.

He starts to think of a word, he can’t let her see him cry, not that she would look at him anyway.

He fills the buzz and pull of letting go of the timeline pulse through him.  
He was sick of these timelines where everyone was close to being blown up, close to imploding, and not even close to eachother. It was time for a break, he grabbed onto the simplest words he could think of for this.

==> Something Good


	7. ==>SOMETHING GOOD: Timestuck

 

Tears still stain Johns face as re-materializes in a new place, _embarrassing_ , he wishes he had the excuse he had just been hit in the face like last time.

Instead, he huddles on the ground, shoulders shaking slightly with the weight of knowledge,

A hand pats him on the back gently, he jumps with a slight gasp and then looks up.

A figure stands beside him wearing a long dark dress covered by a white lab coat.

“Jade.” He breathes out, her friendly face regarding him sympathetically.

“It’ll be alright.” She affirms without know what’s going on, “you'll see.”

“No. It’s not alright, it’s not...can you,” he hesitates, “help me?”

John feels a little pathetic.

Jade tilts her head to the side and waits for him to go on.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” he stares at the ground soberly, “to timehop.’

John feels an entire avalanche of relief bury him as he finally admits it, that he needed help.

Jade nods her head slightly, “I thought you might ask this again,” she gives him a shallow smile,

“Yes, I can help you.”

John looks up, “thank God, thank _you_.”

“It’s not done though!” She bursts out clapping her hands together, “it’s in the fires, or one of the irons on the fire? Whatever, trolls, we're just so close now with the machine.”  
  


“Thank science, I should say.” John contributes.

“Yes, thank science, because we'll going to get you home permanently pal!”

“Can I see the machine?” he says looking around, they were definitely in a lab, G-lab he assumed, the area was incredibly spacey with dim green light illuminating the vast number of empty space and work benches. It eerily reminded him the ecto-biology meteor lab.

He shudders. _Children_.

“No way,” Jade says with her hands on her hips, “I said it’s not ready yet. But! It will be.” She goes from irritated to delighted again.

“Oh?”

“You should meet me in 22 months John.”

“Uh, I mean okay, I can wait.”

“No, I mean zap, pop, that thing.”

John wasn’t quite sure why she would insist on that, “how old are you?”

“Just turned 19,” she voices proudly.

Okay, so he was in the past, nonconsecutive with his personal timeline.

“Do you have a word?” He gives in, one last time jump, he could do that.

“Timestuck.” She looks solemn. John laughs out loud,

“That sounds silly,” he defends himself as she frowns at him.  
  


“John future me is thinking that word right now, she is saying timestuck to herself over and over, and you are missing out, missing her brand-spanking new finished machine,”

“Time doesn’t work like that Jade,” he laughs again.

“That’s what Dave says too, but nooo, future Jade is still waiting, hanky in hand, tearful, where is John?”

He chuckles, but can’t help but notice her slight sarcasm and obvious Dave reference, they would have just started dating at this point. Gross.

“Alright, alright, I can’t leave the lady waiting,” he stands up, “hanky’s are serious business.”

She gives him a soft look, he screws up his mouth, touching his own tear lined face.

“See in 22 months,” she says with sharp glee.

“Okay, see ya,” he concentrates, he wonders in the back of his head what the ‘good thing’ was that she had originally been thinking about, but it was too late now.

He moves onto his next mission with limited hesitation.

===> Timestuck

John feels the familiar whizz and pop of disappearing, his his eyes sinking into his head, and a ringing in his ears. He reopens his eyes to find the same room he’d just been in.

“It worked!” And there’s Jade.

“I’m back,” he confirms with a weak smile.

“And I’m ready for you.” She says in a similar long lab coat and goofy look on her face. The room buzzes with electricity and dim noise, several technicians are scattered around the room.

John looked around, trying to spot one of his other friends amongst the present. He frowns, but turns back to Jade.

“How are we doing this?” He ventures.

“Up here,” she runs up a couple of stairs in a hurry, “follow me.”

He trails after, trying to keep up with her long striders, picking up his own pace as a he feels a sudden gush of optimism, this could work.

“Soooo,” he starts,

“So, first, we strap you into this here,” he shuffles over to a chair fitted on top of the platform with a circular metal birdcage-like entrapment and a couple metal rods and straps hanging off into the inside. The same green light floods the floor space and John arches his eyebrows.

“It looks like a death trap.”

“Well, it is my death trap mister,” she fiddles with it, “and it will ‘time stuck’ you, we’ve done the test....Oh and it won’t kill.” she reassures at the end.

“Well, I’ve seen the movies, and sounds like something people say before they turn their brother into a Mr. Jekyl, are you sure I won’t be half fly after this?”  
  


“Well, maybe _partially_ fly,”

He looks at her blankly, a flash of thought of having one huge bug eye striking him,

“Kidding!” She punches him on the shoulder, “it’s perfectly safe for you, the worst that could-”

“Don’t finish that!” Hell nah, he wasn’t going to be fooled so easily by the laws of movie logic, nope no ‘worst that could happen’ for him.

She guffaws lightly, shoulders shaking, “okay, you’re right, no jinxing it,” she crosses her fingers as she walks backwards over to a control panel. John approaches the machine tentatively and examines the interior.

“You’ve got to tell me how this is going to work.”

“Osmosis!”

“Great?” John was practically sure she was spouting science words to seem confident now.

“It is! Now see that line there,” she points above him, he looks up at a line above his head on the not-a-death-trap science machine, it’s an insulated blue and white tube that travels over to a dark box with his God-tier symbol on it.

“What’s it do?”

“Well, to put it simply, the concept is that things travel from more dense area’s to less dense ones, so we are going to funnel you’re God-tier powers out of you! And that should stop the hyper-amplification of ‘breath’,”

“That sounds like science-magic, like magic that can not be science,”

“Oh shush, Roxy helped with the more esoteric sides of it, the box is her’s, a void of ‘breath’ that the power should rush to! It’s really exciting,”

“Box of void, yes, okay,” he shakes his head, it all sounds above his head, but if he couldn't have faith in his friends what could he have faith in?

“It should be very contained.” She is over beside him again, securing the straps and placing an surrounding metal ring around his head.

“It does sound like you know what you’re doing.”

“As much as we can,” she grins at him in reassurance. He does not feel quite so well.

He glances around as she leaves again, clenching and unclenching his fist.

“Don’t fuck up,” John jerks his head up, finding a picture of Dave and his friends on a large screen in front of them.

“Guys!” He lights up.

“yo,” Dave responds waving his hand,

“Jade-y didn’t want us gettin’ in the way, or we would have way be there in person,” his Roxy waves at him as well.

“Better not fucking die on us,” Karkat crosses his arms, injecting at least some cynicism into the room.

“I can’t believe he’s actually giving up his powers, who does that?” Vriska whispers _very_ loudly to Terezi, she elbows her in the gut in response to be quite.

“Anyway, we think this is a great ideal.” Rose inputs tranquility as she stands to the groups left,

“some ‘time stuck’ sounds nice.” He nervously responds,

“indeed, I think it will be nice development,” she gives him a soft smile, the others squabble next to her in inaudible whispers,

"shush, all of you,” Jade says plugging in what looks to be one last electrical cord, “this is why you guys weren't all invited,”

They growse at her for a second, be but then he wags her finger at them and turns back to John.

“Okay, John, just relax, it should take a few moments to take hold,”

“And then hurt like hell.”

“and then feel _tingly_ ,” Jade scowls at her boyfriend

He nods and ready’s himself mentally for whatever could happen, he glances back up to his friends waving to him from the projector, feeling some more confidence in the system.

His friends all coo over him,

“Be safe!”

“See you in a bit!”

They call after him, waving and grinning in his direction. He takes a deep breath,

“I’m ready.” Jade flips a switch.

John sits there for a few minutes, feeling a lightweight sensation course through him, a slight glow wafting up from his skin and twisting upward to the tube.

He feels relaxed.

Relaxed until he glances at Jade, her feet bathed in green and eyes fixed on the monitor.

Jade. Jade whose picture was obscured by other photo’s in Dirks house. Jade who he hadn’t met in the future. Jade who Dave told him to say hi to, Dave who had been hostile towards him when he arrived.

“Oh, no, fuck, no,” He finally says under his breath, “Jade we have to stop the machine _now_ ,”

He should have trusted his movie instincts more.

She only looks up at him curiously.

“What was that?”

The glowing vapor coming off his skin increases, filling the air like radiant mist, he was going to disappear, he could fill in his gut.

But not before he noticed the mist snaking out the chamber, resisting the black box, the void and leaking out the pipe.

“That, that, is not supposed to happen,” she stares wide-eyed at the anomaly as it clogs the tube and resists flowing into the void.

She rushes up to the wires attached to the mechanism and fiddles with it while the warning light starts to flash above her head, the glowing mist snakes around her head.

He needs to warn her.

“Runawa-!”

He felt the glow consume him, and the familiar tug of space-time grasps at him.

**== >** **a;qiodafjhoi**

John is watching a troll in green defend a young worm creature from a drone.

_Zap_

John is staring at Aradia and Sollux in the space station, they momentarily lock eyes dumbly, she opens her mouth,

_Zap_

He’s on earth’s sahara? A man with a rifle and mustache eyes him,

_Zap_

He’s standing in Daves and Karkat's townhouse, tears again gathering in his eyes, Jade was gone. Wasn’t she.

Dave says something, it sounds muffled and far away,

“Is my other self here then?” He asks in a haze of red and adrenaline.

“You better fucking believe it…” he keeps going, John assumes it is sort of ironic insult.

“Hey!” He calls over to his younger self, filled with the rage of a thousand fuck-ups.

“Just kidding.” Dave puts his hands up defensively, John doesn’t care.

“You!” He growls in a single minded anger..

“I think you mean “us”,” the other John is naive, and annoying..

He strides over to him, only one thought occurs to him: it was always going wrong, all of it, and he was at the center of it.

“Woah there! Let’s wa-”

John bawls up his fist, it didn't matter what he did, because he was just going to mess it up again, he swings back his arm, he was cursed, and then he punches himself in the face with all the force he can muster.

“Why are we like this??” He roars, why was Jade gone. Why was he the reason.

_Zap._


	8. Karkat==> Get out of Here

 

Five Months Earlier

Karkat hated crowds. Granted he hated a lot of the things, but between the jostling, the breach of personal space and forced contact with an obnoxious number of sweaty bodies things couldn't’ get worse.

“This is the literal worst John.” Karkat complained staring up the sun to try and pinpoint the taller boy.

“You came on your own accord,” he responded to Karkats left,

“Whatever. When does the loud chanting start?”

“It can technically be started whenever, it’s a rally Karkat not an imperial march,”

“That must be why it sucks,” John rolls his eyes,

“if you want it to start so badly, then you can start the chanting,”

“I don’t sing,” he grumbles, a headache from the sun already piercing his think-pan, they had to hold this on the one day Jyestha was not overcast.

“Chant,”

“It’s the same musical rhyming loudly. Actually I could do that, one two three four, everyone stop being the physical embodiment of a crotch-blistering diseases,”

John laughs good humoredly, because he was a terrible human castration of a creature, “did you call everyone here an STD?”

“I am explaining the government here Egbert, so yes, a rampant uncoordinated hump machine that is fucking us over,”

John laughs again, the exchange almost distracts Karkat from massive head ache and general irritation.

A figure finally emerges from the crowd and she stands atop the shoulders of a Bastion (who were apparently very sturdy), it a female troll about 9 sweeps old and a mid-blood,

“No more walls,” she begins, the crowd joins in immediately,

“NO MORE WALLS, NO MORE WALLS, NO MORE WALLS,”

even Karkat gets into angry-crowd-mode, a peaceful yet productive way to vent frustrations, namely at the growing fuckery of the city.

They sing a lively tune about a man who holds his wife down until she becomes tree that swallows him whole, it’s simple and bizarre but hey it’s crowd singing, what did he expect.

The mid-blood finally stands back up,

“we are tired of our government doing nothing!”

“Yeah!” shouts the crowd, Karkat makes a face, it wasn't the most mind-blowing way to start a speech that was for fucking sure.

“They have allowed walls in our community, and a tearing apart of the cohesion of this, the cosmopolitan center of the universe,” did she just call them the center of the universe? Whatever the crowd cheers anyway, they could be the center the universe.

“They have ignored coding law violations and have not enforced in equal parts protection for the entire city, or supervised the building of safe buildings,” inspiring, “they have let inequality create an unequal representation in the council….”

She went on to list the complaints they all had come there to voice their agitation about, most having to do with the lack of regulation for city growth, where they just grew haphazardly, and the growing walled off communities and gang threats between species. Everyone was starting to hate each other was the short and dirty of it.

He nodded to the points made, but also wanted to fall asleep, it sounded like a laundry list and felt even more hollow than promises to clean up the Gle-aan river, never gonna happen.

“Can we leave now?” Karkat asks midway through a second overview of building code regulations that had gone ignored.

“You were the wanted who wanted to change things too Kars,”

“Yeah, cause I almost fell into a fucking building wide pothole last pedigree and nearly died, I didn't need to stand meaninglessly in the sun for five hours to be told action might happen eventually, maybe, if we make a nice neat list of ‘fuck you’ written twenty times in the splatter from where my think-pan burst from an overdose fermented puked up lies,”

“Did that one get away from you?”

“No. I just don’t think this is going to do anything anymore, no one important is even here, who is this unintelligible troll choking on their tongue while jerking off to building regulations?” He points at the mid-blood.

“This is how things are done, no one listens without a crowd,”

“that’s what I’ve heard,” Karkats bloodpeasure rises just thinking about it,

“besides, there are some re-”

“TEAR DOWN THE WALLS, TEAR DOWN THE WALLS, BUILD BETTER ROADS, BUILD BETTER ROADS,”

Oh great, more chanting, this will make a great bill that actually works, completely.

“We’re going,” Karkat had stopped enjoying yelling mindlessly and grabbed the back of John’s shirt and dragged him backwards out of the hot sweaty mess of people/creatures. It was the worst.

“Okay,” John huffs, a little put out, but still in good humor, “can we stop by G-lab to get Jade though? It’s almost after work for her.”

“I guess so,” Karkat announces hesitantly, he hadn’t been that way in a while and it made him feel uncomfortable, but seeing Jade made him feel that way too so might as well, feelings be fucked.

“Do you know the way.”

“No.”

“Great.”

“Do you?”

“Does it sound like I do?” Karkat is not amused, “but it’s literally right on top of the massive shitty hill so I assume we just keep walking towards it in that direction,”

John smiles and shrugs, “alright,”

They head out, making their way uptown, trying to catch up on each other’s day to day lives, Karkat doesn't have much to report, he has a shitty job and rocky relationships, ideal, he knows. But someone had to make money and help Pyrope.

John was even more frustrating because he spent a good 20% of his time a no-show, trying to get back to consecutive times, that also meant he knew a bunch of future bullshit who wouldn't tell anyone, but hinted at cause why not.

“So something happens to Jake?” Karkat gathers from John’s latest inference,

“No! I mean not that I can say,” he’s being coy and it makes Karkat want to strangle him, “it’s complicated, and spoilers, ya know.”

“Ugh spoilers,” that word again, “all I know is that you and Dirk showed up in my ablution block ranting about the future, again, in _my_ ablution block.”

“that was two weeks ago!” They had this conversation before, but it still blew Karkats mind that they would do that, “and it wasn't my fault you were thinking about Dancing Clubs really intensely,”

“It was a great film!” Karkat projects defensively, “Jill out dances her rival human-creature and wins the heart of distant but alluring human Kyle, it’s a great fucking film,”

John laughs at him, even wiping at his eye, “alright Karkat,”

“You would know if you’d’ve seen it,”

“Yeah, I know, I haven't seen it,” John says a touch forlornly, Karkat feels a pang of sympathy for for the guy, it was harder to keep up with the times for him with zapping to fuck knows where,

Karkat hears the sheer of metal against metal, his ears perk up,

“what are you two doing down here?” Oh shit,

a group of male Mesmeians stare them down, one especially brown and short holds a knife,

“what are you two fine gents doing down this way?” He repeats in a casually murderous tone.

“To pick up a friend of ours,” Karkat isn't sure if John sounds like himself to keep his cool under pressure, or he’s just that thick to not realize this is a “maday, maday, fucking warning” kind of situation.

“down this way?” The guy pops one very hairy lip up at him, a genuine sneer,

“just real quick,” John affirms, though Karkat can see one bead of sweat working it’s way down his cheek, so he does see the knife.

“But we were just turning around,” Karkat interjects gruffly, he did not want to strife with a group of six, _armed_ , Mesmeians.

Karkat grabs John again and starts to hurry them off at a jog- run.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that in this part,” the larger of them spouts, a sudden bright flash of light accompanied by a clicking noise distracts Karkat, did they just take a picture of them?

“We don’t mean any trouble, you can just have your turf, we’re not even part of any gangs even.” John’s voice is getting more low now, threatening, Karkat tries to not look at him directly.

“That’s not the issue here,”

Karkat squints his eyes in apprehension.

“Uh,” John responds and glances at Karkat in confusion, one of the threatening fuckers starts to prowl around them, obviously trying to surround them,

“You see,” says one of the side ones, “Alecia and her Clot will pay money to see a troll and human broken up. Doesn't like where the trend is going she says, rather see them… bloody.”

Karkat glances down at his own hand, the one clutching John’s wrist close enough to the palm to look like he’s holding it. Holding his hand. Fuck, he was going to get them beaten up by gangs for inter-species romance, one he wasn't even in, this could only happen to him.

“We’re not in a relationship!” John retracts his hand readily and puts them like they're the police and he’s giving himself up.

“I confirm, we’re just walking to find a mutual friend, as mutual friends, no quadrants,” Karkat tries to aid the valiant effort to get out of this, but had already realized the goons had the before picture, now they just needed the after.

“I don’t think they like ‘friends’ either.” One of the thugs said, John and Karkat give each other a shared look and then turn around and run.

“Nothing like a late afternoon run, eh Karkat?” John says jokingly, Karkat growls at him from the very back of his throat, “I know, I know.” He replies.

They are almost out of the gangs turf, as marked by the lead to the loss of the strange tall houses that look like they’re made of aluminum and wind up to the sky. One of the goons swoops down and hooks Karkats ankle right before they're out (of fucking course).

“Oof,” Karkat falls on his face and then lets out a string of profanities highlighting where they should put their addled think-pans very much up their own waste-shoots.

John takes out his hammer and Karkat retrieves his scythe from his sylladex from where he was on the ground, time to go.

The Mesmeians whoop and precede to officially surround them like a pack of dogs, slobbering from their wide and exaggerated lips, or at least that’s how Karkat imagines it.

John strikes first, not eager to wait, hitting the one directly in front of them in the stomach, the Mesmian crumples over but another jumps out to strike John in the back.

Karkat throws himself at the aisalent, hooking his scythe round the other’s clobbering-bat weapon and yanking it from his hands,

“HA!” Someone kicks him painfully in the knee, “urg!” He lashes out blindly, striking one of them in the cheek, they bleed a type of metallic slow goop out of the wound, yuck, that wasn’t even on the spectrum.

Karkat grabs the injured ones leg and trips him to the ground, slamming his head into the hard street, knocking him out. Good.

John gives him a questioning look, but both of them are interrupted by the largest one of them swinging a huge metal pipe at them.

“We’re not winning this,” Karkat sounds out loud , doubting victory despite just making one of them pass out.

John nods briefly , they both turn around and run through an opening made by one of the aliens being incapacitated, they keep running at a breakneck pace until they make it to the corner, the Messmeians falling behind, they keep running anyway.

He and John run two more blocks, and then another until they are wheezing and gasping on a street corner near a bus stop.

“Hahah, hee” John laughs, “we did it!” He grabs Karkat in a sudden hug, at first all his muscles tense up at the intrusion, but then he cracks a small smile himself.

“Yeah, we did it.”

They walk back to John’s, and most of theirs, apartment building talking animatedly about how they kicked at least some ass that day. They don’t bring up the fact they had just been harassed for alleged inter-species relations.

They're close, but Karkat perks up his ears when he hears a racket a few streets down,

“do you think they followed us…?” He asks in a hushed tone, no response, he turns around, he turns around again, “John?” 

He does another sweep around himself, "do you hear that? Are...here?"

The loser had disappeared. Again. For no reason, Karkat almost overflows with anger, perfect timing, really, he’ll strangle the boy next time he see’s him.

He hears a whoop in the distance.

********

Karkat finally reaches the apartment complex, Jade, Roxy, John, Terezi, Dave, Rose, and sometimes Kanaya and him all lived in there in the 20 story skyscraper. Yeah, quaint. Karkat and a few of the others lived scattered around town, him around 25% of the time for his crappy night job, but he mostly lived with Terezi. They were all coming together in one night as a monthly “Game Gang Get Together.” Nothing says bonding like waxing romantic about every other time someone died trying to create the universe.

Karkat is pissed, he is pissed his friends live so far away in a stupid tall building, he’s pissed his face hurts, and he’s pissed at John.

He must have some way to the control that stupidity, so why’d he’d up and leave? And why did he have the feeling no one was going to care?

He kept getting away with this sort of shit.

Karkat ends up just getting angrier and angrier on the elevator ride up, he’s fuming when he makes it to Jades room where this was all set.

He walks into find most of his friends already there, Terezi lounging on a couch, Rose with a book, and Jade already home and hanging off Dave’s neck like an ornament, Karkat makes a contorted face at that.

“Where’s John?” He starts.

“In the other room,” Dave indicates with a jab of his thumb to the lounge.

“Are you alright Karkat? You look hurt.” Jade comments on his “roughed” up appearance of bruises and a black eye.

Karkat muscles his way past them, ignoring their protests and queries of concern.

“Karkats looking for you!” Terezi calls, trying to keep some peace, “Joooohn.”

Before Karkat can burst in on John with the upper hand, the other boy enters from the indicated side room.

“Yeah?” He comes out smiling with Roxy following after with a large grin plastered across her lips as well, “Karkat you look terrible,”  
“What happened?” Roxy asks, fixated,

Karkat looks John up and down, not taking his eyes from him as he answers her, “they caught up.”

He replies flatly with arms crossed across his chest.

“Who?”

“The Messmeians!” He expresses, throwing his arms in the air, breaking cool anger for a hot one.

“Oh! Oh man, that was two weeks ago for me,” John looks thoughtful, “they caught up it looks like, huh.”

“It looks like it!” Karkat explodes indicating towards himself, “and I suppose you appear-ified like nothing.”

“Roxy got me back with her system,” he’s not getting it.

“It was ‘hiking’ this time, and it worked!”

“Well that is fucking fantastic, I’m so happy for the both of you. Just fucking ecstatic,”

“Calm down with the cheerfulness bro, you might blind someone,” Dave remarks sarcastically behind him, commenting on Karkats vehement tone they were not catching on to.

“Well maybe, he should stop taking hikes,”

“the system works,” John looks at him quizzically,

“so does fucking controlling your powers, like, I don’t know, not catching onto random thoughts you fancy and ditching people like your name is bad-human-aquatic-food making it’s way out of your puke dispensing fuck hole!”

“overboard.” Rose comments with a sigh from her perch in the reading nook.

“Whatever! You get my point,”

“it’s an accident,”

“it always is,” he crosses his arms, “because _you_ are a sorry excuse of a human morphing into an even BIGGER idiot of a person, ooh, now he has shapeshifting powers, how does he fucking do it?”

John is starting to frown and look genuinely offended, however, Terezi is suddenly at Karkats side, shoosh-papping his ass,

“Karkat. Karkat.” She says earnestly, “don’t be a little nookstain about this.”

Dave laughs in the background.

“Don’t. Touch. Me!” He wriggles out of her reach, things are weird between them.

“You’re always like this.” John finally speaks up, “have to lose it, and when people try to help it’s never good enough.” He juts his jaw out, looking him heatedly in the eyes.

“Don’t talk to me about “losing” it,” he puts “losing” in quotation marks,

“oh brother, just drop it boys,”

“no Jade, let him go on, tire himself like a real adult, won’t even let his girlfriend calm him,”

“Terezi is not actually my girlfriend,” Karkat says in an angry mumble, averting his eyes downward,

“Well, not with what you're doing,”

“What I'm doing?! You mean fucking being there while some of us flint away like fairy boys with better things to do,” he gestures like a fairy mockingly, jumping in the air for effect. That really seems to get John’s goat, Terezi gives him a warning look.

“And smothering is so much better,” he asserts low and with a cutting undertone.

Karkat scoffs, “you don’t have to make up insults, I have plenty of fuckups and nook-sniffing attributes to use against me,”

“I knew! You don’t even know what you're doing, being a micro-managing jerk, you get so pissed everytime I accidently zap in and out, but when I apologize it’s not enough, when you’re not even aware,”

“You didn’t apologize- and what about not being aware?”

“John.” Terezi is serious, and seriously scary baring her teeth and cane-sword. John thinks better of himself,

“never mind,” he states however very reluctantly.

“Terezi?” Karkat asks, eyes going wide, “is there something I don't know?” This was getting ridiculous.

“No, Karkat,” she says,

“you’re not even a little worried you don’t know what you two are?” John inputs angrily,

“John!” Terezi cautions,

“no! Let him finish!” Karkat asserts earnestly, “or...Terezi what is it?”

“No!”

“You can’t just bring this up and not explain it!” everyone is speaking at their highest volume at this point.

“My school!” She relents, “don’t have to help pay...or be around all the time.”

Karkat blinks rapidly, “I know that,” he replies softly, “I was doing it for you, to help,”

“Yeah, and you come home and complain about your shitty job literally all night, it’s a fucking guilt trap man,”

“Dave!” Even Jade and Dave are getting in on it, “it is true Karkat. You _could_ quit,” She adds truthfully, if not guiltily,

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Karkat has a lot of ‘waits,’ “I’m doing this to help with law school, it’s not a fucking crime, not intervention-worthy… and Terezi is,” he pauses, analyzing Terezi’s darkening face, “fine?” She grinds her teeth.

“Not fine, exactly,” Rose comments once more, tilting back her book to look him in the eye.

“You come up here to nanny John, and then you nanny me, and it’s never a break Karkat!” She finally puts out abrasively, “nanny, nanny, nanny, don’t keep your crappy job just for me, it doesn’t work like that!”

“But!-” Karkat is at a loss for words here, “c’mon,” he deflates,

“you _did_ come all the way up here to tell John how to live his life, and now everyone elses fo’ real, ya troll,”

“John literally zaps out of people’s lives!”

“Ha, I come back, your girlfriend can’t even handle when you’re around all the time, since that’s when you’re there, all the time,” John is looking uncharastically mean, Karkat squints his eyes aggressively.

They all are gathering around him like a pack of hyena’s, air is coming into his lungs in short bursts, he doesn’t feel well. IS this what they really thought?

“Fine!” He exclaims, walking over towards the door resolutely, “fine, John! I’ll stop ‘smothering,’ ” he turns to Terezi, “and nannying,”

He goes to the door and opens it, “I’ll go be my own troll, and let you be so much happier without me,” he slams the door.

Dramatics, 10/10. Karkat sighs, he feels like crying, he keeps walking anyway, back to his and Terezi’s apartment, back to his dull room, and dead end job.

Maybe he should leave.


End file.
